‘What d’ye mean, Denis?’ demanded Wyndham almost violently.
‘I’m manin’—what I’m manin’,’ said Denis, who certainly was not violent at all. ‘Ye know yourself, sir, that the first thing ye said to me about the crathur was to take her to the safest place ye knew.’
‘Well?’ said Wyndham, with anger he tried hard to stifle.
‘Faix, yer honour, it seemed to me that the safest place I knew for the young lady was the house that belonged to yer honour.’
This no doubt was distinctly flattering, but at the moment the flattery did not appeal to Wyndham. The girl down there—and what the deuce was he to do with her? And what would all the people round be thinking?—for the most part country folk. The Cottage lay twenty miles outside Dublin. The Rector, Mr. Barry, would for one be positively enraged. He would require all sorts of explanations.
Denis had waited for a reply, but finding none, now went on:
‘Anything wrong, sir?’
‘Anything!’ said Wyndham. ‘Were you mad that you should take a—a person like that down to my house? A girl found lying on the Professor’s doorstep! Good heavens, man! what could you mean by it?’
He exaggerated a little when he said ‘my house.’ As a fact, he lived very little in the Cottage, only using it when he felt tired and overdone by work. His real home was to be found in rooms in Dublin—pleasant rooms in Upper Merrion Street. There he entertained his bachelor friends, and was highly regarded by his landlady. He was one of those men—more usual than the coming young lady believes—who thought a great deal more of their work, and their reading, and their golf, than of the opposite sex.
‘Well, sir, there’s this,’ said Denis, who had remained beautifully calm. ‘Besides tellin’ me I was to take her to a safe place, ye specially said as she was to be thrated as me own daughter. I remimber the words well. Now, ye know well, sir, havin’ bin intimate with me an’ Bridget since ye wur in yer first throusers, that we haven’t a child between us; an’ yet for all that I tuck it for manin’ that the young lady was to be given to Bridget.’