In the drawing-room of Drumgool House they were now awaiting the arrival of Mr. French.
"I say," said Mr. Dashwood. "I hope he is the man I met in London."
"I hope so, too," said the girl, looking round the quaint old room, with its potpourri vases, its antimacassars, its furniture of a distant day. The place smelt like an old valentine with a tinge of musk clinging to it. Pretty women had once sat here, had played on that rosewood piano whose voice was like the voice of a harp in the bass, like a banjo in the treble; had woven antimacassars, had read the romances of Mr. Richardson, had waited for the gentlemen after dinner, the claret-flushed gentlemen whose cheery voices would be heard no more.
"I hope so, too," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'm all right, for I'm the governess, you know. If he isn't, it will look very strange us arriving together, so you must explain, please. Are you good at explaining things?"
"Rather! I say, is he a family man? I mean, are there a lot of children?"
"No. Mr. French has only one little daughter, an invalid. I'm not a real governess. I don't take a salary, and all that. I've just come over to—— Well, I want a home for a while, and I want to see Ireland."
"Strikes me you'll see a lot of it here," said Mr. Dashwood, looking out at the vast solitudes to the east, where the hills stood ranged like armed men guarding a country where the bird shadow and the cloud shadow were the only moving things.
"Yes," said Miss Grimshaw, and yawned. She liked Mr. Dashwood, but his light-hearted conversation just now rather palled upon her.
"And won't you catch it in the winter here?" said he, as he watched Croag Mahon, a giant monolith, sunlit a moment ago, and now wreathing itself with mist just as a lady wreathes herself with a filmy scarf. "What on earth will you do with yourself when it rains?"