Sir Archy was, however, very far from feeling satisfied. What he had heard, brief and broken as it was, but served to excite his suspicions, and make him regard this guest as at least a very doubtful character. Too shrewd a diplomatist to push his inquiries any further, he adroitly turned the conversation upon matters of comparative indifference, reserving to himself the part of acutely watching Talbot's manner, and narrowly scrutinizing the extent of his acquaintance with Mark O'Donoghue. In whatever school Talbot had been taught, his skill was more than a match for Sir Archy's. Not only did he at once detect the meaning of the old man's policy; but he contrived to make it subservient to his own views, by the opportunity it afforded him of estimating the influence he was capable of exerting over his nephew; and how far, if need were, Mark should become dependent on his will, rather than on that of any member of his own family. The frankness of his manner, the seeming openness of his nature, rendered his task a matter of apparent amusement; and none at the table looked in every respect more at ease than Harry Talbot.
While Sir Archy was thus endeavouring, with such skill as he possessed, to worm out the secret reason—and such, he well knew, there must be—of Talbot's visit to that unfrequented region, Kerry O'Leary was speculating, with all his imaginative ability, how best to account for that event. The occasion was one of more than ordinary difficulty. Talbot looked neither like a bailiff nor a sheriffs officer; neither had he outward signs of a lawyer or an attorney. Kerry was conversant with the traits of each of these. If he were a suitor for Miss Kate, his last guess, he was a day too late.
“But sure he couldn't be that: he'd never come with a throop of noisy vagabonds, in the dead of the night, av he was after the young lady. Well, well, he bates me out—sorra lie in it,” said he, drawing a heavy sigh, and crossing his hands before him in sad resignation.
“On my conscience, then, it was a charity to cut your hair for you, anyhow!” said Mrs. Branagan, who had been calmly meditating on the pistol-shot, which, in grazing Kerry's hair, had somewhat damaged his locks.
“See, then—by the holy mass! av he went half an inch lower, it's my life he'd be after taking; and if he was fifty O'Donoghues, I'd have my vingince. Bad cess to me, but they think the likes of me isn't fit to live at all.”
“They do,” responded Mrs. Branagan, with a mild puff of smoke from the corner of her mouth—“they do; and if they never did worse than extarminate such varmin, their sowls would have an easier time of it.”
Kerry's brow lowered, and his lips muttered; but no distinct reply was audible.
“Sorra bit of good I see in ye at all,” said she, with inexorable severity. “I mind the time ye used to tell a body what was doing above stairs; and, though half what ye said was lies, it was better than nothing: but now yer as stupid and lazy as the ould beast there fornint the fire—not a word out of yer head from morning to night. Ayeh, is it your hearin's failin' ye?”
“I wish to the Blessed Mother it was,” muttered he fervently to himself.
“There's a man now eatin' and drinkin' in the parlour, and the sorra more ye know about him, than if he was the Queen of Sheba.”