"She is a woman therefore to be won;" but how is his courtship to be sped, if thorns are to beset his path on every side, and if persistent malice blocks his way to the feet of her whom he adores?
He reaches home in an unenviable frame of mind, and is thoroughly unsociable to Owen Kelly and the old squire all the evening.
Next morning sees him in the same mood; and, indeed, it is about this time he takes to imagining his little love as being a hapless prisoner in the hands of two cruel ogres (I am afraid he really does apply the term "ogres" to the two old ladies of Moyne), and finds a special melancholy pleasure in depicting her as a lonely captive condemned to solitary confinement and dieted upon bread and water.
To regard the Misses Blake in the light either of ogres or witches required some talent; but Mr. Desmond, at this period of his love-affair, managed it.
He would go about, too, singing,—
"Oh, who will o'er the downs so free,"
taking immense comfort out of, and repeating over and over again, such lines as—
"I sought her bower at break of day,
'Twas guarded safe and sure;"
"Her father he has locked the door,
Her mother keeps the key;
But neither bolt nor bar shall keep
My own true love from me,"—