"Like an ordinary mortal! He is gray as to his clothes, a trifle pasty as to his complexion, and more than a trifle fine in his manners. But you'll get on with him all right—girls like mashers."
"You know that I hate that word, Power! Why will you use it?"
"Because it describes your cousin to a nicety."
"Goodness! A masher!" the girl cries in dismay. "How will such a creature live at Donaghmore? He should have gone to Aunt Julia's in Dublin—he would have felt at home there."
Whereat they both laugh, natural hearty laughter that dies away in musical echoes.
Aunt Julia is one of the bugbears of the Blake family, her gentility and general fineness being altogether too much for them.
"Oh, hang it, the fellow's man enough to prefer Donaghmore and you to
Merrion Square!"
"And Aunt Julia," the girl finishes slyly.
"Yes," he says. And then, with sudden passion—"Is this man to come between us, Honor? To-day as I looked at him I felt, if it was so, I could find it in my heart to shoot him dead!"
It is getting dusk here on the lower quarry road, which leads them by a short cut to Donaghmore. On one side stretches the bog, on the other the grim gray rocks shut out the sky. To Honor's nervous fancy it almost seems as if the rocks catch up his vengeful words, and echo them mockingly. More than one ghastly story is connected with this lonely spot; and, spoken here, the cruel words have double meaning.