The other children looked at him in surprise; his enthusiasm had astonished them too.
"Why, Murtagh," said Rosie, "how awfully hot you look! your cheeks are as red as fire."
"Yes," said Nessa, bending forward and arranging his hair that was standing up on end, "I think you are quite excited by my story."
"If you please, Miss," said Brown, at the door, "tea has been in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour, and Mr. Blair desired me to let you know."
Murtagh started up.
"Why, Nessa, I had no idea it was so late!" he said, with a certain amount of ordinary surprise in his voice, but his eyes still full of suppressed excitement. "Good night," and without more words he went.
His abrupt departure disturbed Nessa; she feared that with the intention of distracting his thoughts she had really excited him too much.
Her disquietude would not have lessened if she had been able to see into Murtagh's mind.
He had entered the schoolroom in a tumult of rage, indignation, and rebellion. Bitterly repentant for the scene in the barn-yard which had caused so much unhappiness, he believed that it was nothing but deliberate persecution on Mr. Plunkett's part to pretend still to consider him guilty.
With his wild little heart stirred to these depths he had listened to Nessa's story. The barbaric independence, the despairing savage struggle for freedom of the oppressed and devoted Sicilians, had appealed to his imagination in a way that it would have done at no other time. His own spirit seemed to be put in action; his wrongs were somehow merged in theirs; and in the tempest of their vengeance he was whirled along, feeling almost as though he too were at last taking just revenge for all the injuries that rankled in his mind.