“Pray don’t make any confession to me,” said he. “If I had not heard the story of the Princess, should I be here either?”
“My name,” said she, “is Beatrice Avon. My father’s name you may have heard—most people have heard his name, though I’m afraid that not so many have read his books.”
“But I have met your father,” said he. “If he is Julius Anthony Avon, I met him some years ago. He breakfasted with my tutor at Oxford. I have read all his hooks.”
“Oh, come into the boat,” she cried with a laugh. “I feel that we have been introduced.”
“And so we have,” said he, stepping upon the gunwale so as to push off the boat. “Now, where is your best landing place?”
She pointed out to him a white cottage at the entrance to a glen on the opposite coast of the lough, just below the ruins—they could be seen by the imaginative eye—of the Castle of Carrigorm. The cottage was glistening in the moonlight.
“That is where we have been living—my father and I—for the past month,” said she. “He is engaged on a new work—a History of Irish Patriotism, and he has begun by compiling a biographical dictionary of Irish Informers. He is making capital progress with it. He has already got to the end of the seventh volume and he has very nearly reached the letter C—oh, yes, he is making rapid progress.”
“But why is he at this place? Is he working up the Irish legends as well?”
“It seems that the French landed here some time or other, and that was the beginning of a new era of rebellions. My father is dealing with the period, and means to have his topography strictly accurate.”
“Yes,” said Harold, “if he carefully avoids everything that he is told in Ireland his book may tend to accuracy.”