Here Molly, who had been listening to the discussion "with all her ears"—anything connected with the mysterious personality of the absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination for her—gave an irrepressible little note of laughter.
Rupert looked up at her quickly, and their eyes met.
"Hold your tongue, Miss," cried Miss O'Donoghue, sharply; aware that she had gone too far in her last remark, and glad to relieve her oppression in another direction, "how dare you laugh? Sophia, this is a terrible thing your brother wants me to believe—may I ask what your opinion is? Though I'll not deny I don't think that will be worth much."
Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarrassment.
"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose—you are not absolutely a drivelling idiot—all the Landales are not ripening for lunatic asylums—collect your wits, Sophia, I know you have not got any, but you have enough to be able to give a plain answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad, child?"
"God forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not mad, of course, not in the least mad."
Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity had really fallen upon us—and of course there are symptoms, no doubt there are symptoms...."
"What are his symptoms—has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"
"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."
"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill—and he wasn't an O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this moment indite to him."