"You want to drive me mad. You do. You hate me. Master Charles hates me. Oh, I wish I was mad."
"I'd sooner see you chained by the waist in the straw than see what I saw to-night." Then followed an oath.
The door was rudely opened, and there entered first of all our old friend, Charles's groom, William, who seemed beside himself with passion, and after him a figure which struck the good Irishman dumb with amazement and admiration—a girl as beautiful as the summer morning, with her bright brown hair tangled over her forehead, and an expression of wild terror and wrath on her face, such as one may conceive the old sculptor wished to express when he tried, and failed, to carve the face of the Gorgon.
She glared on them both in her magnificent beauty only one moment. Yet that look, as of a lost soul of another world, mad, hopeless, defiant, has never past from the memory of either of them.
She was gone in an instant into an inner room, and William was standing looking savagely at the priest. In another moment his eyes had wandered to Charles, and then his face grew smooth and quiet, and he said—
"We've been quarrelling, sir; don't you and this good gentleman say anything about it. Master Charles, dear, she drives me mad sometimes. Things are not going right with her."
Charles and the priest walked thoughtfully home together.
"Allow me to say, Ravenshoe," said the priest, "that, as an Irishman, I consider myself a judge of remarkable establishments. I must say honestly that I have seldom or never met with a great house with so many queer elements about it as yours. You are all remarkable people. And, on my honour, I think that our friend Mackworth is the most remarkable man of the lot."