“I have already made an engagement here, sir.”
“Yes,” said Sybella, to whom this speech seemed half addressed, “Sir Archibald has been kind enough to offer me his guidance up the glen, where there are several points of view finer than any I have seen.”
Emboldened by the success of these advances, Sir Marmaduke, with a courtesy he was perfect master of, requested the party would not delay their kind intentions, but favour him with their company on the following day.
It is doubtful whether Sir Archy might not have declined a more formal invitation; but there seemed something so frank in the abruptness of the present, that he acceded at once; and Kate having also pledged herself to accompany him, their greetings were interchanged, and they parted.
CHAPTER XXIII. SOME OPPOSITE TRAITS OF CHARACTER
It may seem strange and almost paradoxical—but so it was—Kate O'Donoghue's presence appeared to have wrought a most magical change in the whole household of the O'Donoghue. The efforts they themselves made to ward off the semblance of their fallen estate, induced a happier frame of mind than that which resulted from daily brooding over their misfortunes; the very struggle elicited a courage they had left long in disuse; and the cheerfulness which at first was but assumed, grew gradually more and more natural. To the O'Donoghue, who, for many a day, desired no more than to fend off the evil in his own brief time; who, with the selfishness of an old age passed in continual conflict with poverty, only sought a life interest in their bettered fortunes, she was a boon above all price. Her light step, her lighter laugh, her mirthful tone of conversation, with its many anecdotes and stories of places and people he had not heard of before, were resources against gloom that never failed.
Sir Archy, too, felt a return to the old associations of his youth, in the presence ef a young, beautiful, and accomplished girl, whose gracefulness and elegance threw a halo around her as she went, and made of that old and crumbling tower, dark with neglect, and sad with time, a salon, teeming with its many appliances against depression, where she herself, armed with so many fascinations, dispensed cheerfulness and bliss on all about her. Nor was he selfish in all this. He marked with delight the impression made upon his favourite Herbert, by his cousin's attractive manners. How insensibly, as it were, the boy was won from ruder pursuits, and coarser pleasures, to sit beside her as she sung, or near her as she read; with what interest he pursued his lessons in French, beneath her tuition, and the ardour with which he followed every plan of study suggested by her. Sir Archibald saw all these things, and calculated on their result with accuracy. He foresaw how Kate's attractive gifts would throw into the shade the ruder tastes the boy's condition in life might expose him to adopt, and thus aid him in the great object of his whole existence—to save him, at least, from the wreck of his house.
Mark alone seemed untouched by her presence; save that the wild excesses of high spirit, to which from time to time he ever gave way, were now gone, and in their place, a deep gloom, a moroseness of character succeeded, rendering him usually silent before her, or sunk in his own saddening reflections. Kate would sometimes adventure to disperse the dark clouds from his mind, but ever without success; he either felt annoyed at being the subject of remark, or left the room; so that at last, she abandoned the effort, hoping that time and its changes would effect what the present denied. Perhaps, too, she had reasons for this hope. More than once, with womanly quickness, had she marked how he had stood with his eye fixed upon her, unconscious of being seen; how, when about to leave the room, he would loiter about, as if in search of something, but, in reality, to listen to the song she was singing. Still, she showed no sign of having seen these things; but always, in her air towards him, affected a careless ease of manner, as like his own as possible. For days, sometimes for an entire week, he would absent himself from home; and, as he was never submissive to much questioning, his appearance called forth no other remark than some passing observation of what had occurred in his absence, but which drew from him no interchange of confidence.
These symptoms of Mark's altered character made a deeper impression on his father than events of greater moment could have done. He watched every movement and expression of his favourite son, to catch some clue to the change; but all in vain. The young man never, by any accident, alluded to himself: nor did he often now advert to the circumstance of the family difficulties; on the contrary, a lethargic carelessness seemed to brood over him, and he went about like one who had lost all zest for life, and all care for its enjoyments.