Yes, the wooing is rapid, and she is not won; but "she likes me," thinks Desmond, with a touch of rapture he has never known before. "Certainly, she likes me; and—there are always time and hope."
"My dear Monica, it grows late," says Miss Priscilla at this moment. "Say good-by to Madame O'Connor, and let us go."
"Oh, not a bit of it, now," says Madam O'Connor, hospitably in her rich, broad brogue, inherited in all its purity, no doubt, from her kingly ancestor. "You mustn't take her away yet: sure the day is young. Mr. Ryde, why don't you get Miss Beresford to play a game with you? In my time, a young fellow like you wouldn't wait to be told to make himself agreeable to a pretty girl. There, go now, do! Have you brought your own racket with you?"
"I left it at home," says Mr. Ryde. "Fact is," affectedly, "I didn't think tennis was known over here. Didn't fancy you had a court in the land."
This speech fires the blood of the O'Toole's last descendant.
Madam O'Connor uprears a haughty crest, and fixes the luckless lieutenant with an eagle eye, beneath which he quails.
"There is no doubt we lack much," she says, taking his measure with lofty scorn; "but we have at least our manners."
With this she turns her back upon him, and commences a most affable discussion with Miss Penelope, leaving her victim speechless with fright.
"Have a brandy-and-soda, Ryde?" says Mr. Kelly, who is always everywhere, regarding the wretched marine through his eyeglass with a gaze of ineffable sadness. "Nothing like it, after an engagement of this sort."
"I thought Ireland was the land for jokes," says the injured Ryde, indignantly,—"stock in trade sort of thing over here; and yet when I give 'em one of mine they turn upon me as if I was the worst in the world. I don't believe any one understands 'em over here."