‘Ah! how stupid in me! I am very sorry. I beg your pardon,’ and he hurried off, looking as if very sorry were not a mere matter of course.
‘Poor man,’ thought Albinia, ‘I dare say he has reckoned on it all this time, and hunted out St. Leocadia in Alban Butler, and then tried to screw up his courage all yesterday. Ulick has managed to traverse a romance, but perhaps it is just as well, for what would be the effect on the public of Mr. Hope in that coat being seen ringing at the convent door?’
‘Well, Miss Durant,’ said Ulick, entering the drawing-room in the winter twilight, ‘here is evidence for you!’
‘You have actually penetrated the convent, and seen my aunt? Impossible! and yet this pencilled note is her own dear writing!’
‘You don’t mean that you really were let in?’ cried Sophy.
‘I entered quite legitimately, I assure you. It was all luck. I’d just been putting up at the Crown, when what should I see in a sort of a trance, staring right into the inn-yard, but as jolly-looking a priest as ever held a station. “An’ it’s long since I’ve seen the like of you,” says he aloud to himself. “Is it the car?” says I. “Sure it is,” says he. “I’ve not laid my eyes on so iligant a vehicle since I left County Tyrone.”’
‘Mr. O’Hara!’ exclaimed Genevieve.
‘“And I’m mistaken if you’re not the master of it,” he goes on, taking the measure of me all over,’ continued Ulick, putting on his drollest brogue. ‘You see he had too much manners to say that such a personable young gentleman, speaking such correct English, could be no other than an Irishman, so I made my bow, and said the car and I were both from County Galway, and we were straight as good friends as if we’d hunted together at Ballymakilty. To be sure, he was a little taken aback when he found I was one of the Protestant branch, of the O’Mores, but a countryman is a countryman in a barbarous land, and he asked me to call upon him, and offered to do me any service in his power.’
‘I am sure he would. He is the kindest old gentleman I know,’ exclaimed Genevieve. ‘He always used to bring me barleysugar-drops when I was a little girl, and it was he who found out our poor old Biddy in distress at Hadminster, and sent her to live with us.’
‘Indeed! Then I owe him another debt of gratitude—in fact, he told me that one of his flock, meaning Biddy, had spoken to him honourably of me. “Well,” said I, “the greatest service you could do me, sir, would be to introduce me to Mademoiselle Belmarche; I have a young lady’s commission for her.” “From my little Genevieve,” he said, “the darling that she is. Did you leave the child well?” And so when I said it was a present for her saint’s day, and that your heart was set on it—’