‘Oh! just an English acquaintance of mine. There, goodbye. I wish I had come in time to surprise the modern St. Kevin! Are you sure there was no drowning in the lake?’
‘You know it was blessed to drown no one after Kathleen.’
‘Reassuring! Only mind you put a chapter about it into the tour.’ Under the cover of these words he was gone.
‘I declare there’s some mystery about his companion!’ exclaimed Horatia. ‘Suppose it were Calthorp himself?’
‘Owen is not so lost to respect for his sister.’
‘But did you not see how little he was surprised, and how much preoccupied?’
‘Very likely; but no one but you could imagine him capable of such an outrage.’
‘You have been crazy ever since you entered Ireland, and expect every one else to be the same. Seriously, what damage did you anticipate from a little civility?’
‘If you begin upon that, I shall go out and finish my sketch, and not unpack one of the boxes.’
Nevertheless, Lucilla spent much fretting guesswork on her cousin’s surmise. She relied too much on Owen’s sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort? Though aware of the anonymous nature of brother’s friends, the secrecy struck her as unusually guarded; and to one so used to devotion, it seemed no extraordinary homage that another admirer should be drawn along at a respectful distance, a satellite to her erratic course; nay, probably all had been concerted in Woolstone-lane, and therewith the naughty girl crested her head, and prepared to take offence. After all, it could not be, or why should Owen have been bent on returning, and be so independent of her? Far more probably he had met a college friend or a Westminster schoolfellow, some of whom were in regiments quartered in Ireland, and on the morrow would bring him to do the lions of Glendalough, among which might be reckoned the Angel Anglers!