A pretty picture were these two girls--who loitered a little amongst the darkling flowers, while Tone was speaking his farewell. Doreen had fulfilled the promise of her childhood, and was now a statuesque woman of two-and-twenty, with rich warm blood mantling under an olive skin--soft eyes of the brown colour of a mountain stream, shaded by long silken lashes--and an aquiline nose whose nostrils were as finely cut and sensitive as were her aunt's. People wondered where she got her scornful look, for Mr. Arthur Wolfe (attorney-general now) was the most peaceable and quiet of men, while all the world knew that her retiring mother had faded from excess of meekness. Her aunt, Lady Glandore, had watched her growth approvingly, for the tall supple form was what her own had been--as was the swan-like neck and head-toss. She approved and seemed quite to like her niece till she remembered that she was a Papist and a blot on the escutcheon; then she despised her, yet never dared to touch forbidden ground save in a covert way; for Doreen had a temper, when roused, as self-asserting as her own, and her aunt was grown old before her time; too old to rise without an effort at the sound of the war-trumpet.
Doreen was dutiful to her aunt in most things; but on the subject of her oppressed religion was a very tigress. If Lady Glandore permitted herself too broad a sally, those eyes with the strongly-marked black pupils would shoot forth a cairngorm flame--that mass of dark brown hair which hung in natural curls after the Irish fashion down her back, would shake like a lion's crest, and my lady would retire from the field discomfited. Yet this occurred but seldom, and folks could only guess how the Penal Code burned into her flesh by a certain unnatural quietude and an artificial repose of manner beyond her years.
Of course she adored Tone, the champion who had wrecked his life on behalf of three million serfs who were her brethren, and under his guidance became quite a little conspirator, niece though she was of an ultra-Protestant grandee, daughter of the attorney-general, who, as such, was crown prosecutor of her allies. It may be asked, how came her aunt to permit the girl to form such dangerous ties? The damsel was wayward, and the aunt a victim of some secret canker, over which she brooded more and more as her hair blanched. A hard tussle or two, and practically she lowered her standard. The girl went whither she listed, and chose as bosom friend Sara Curran, daughter of the member of parliament, to whom her father was deeply attached; and who had on the occasion of her uncle's tragic end struck up a queer friendship with her aunt, which flourished by reason of its incongruity.
Doreen, from the time she could first toddle, had been accustomed to scour the country on ponyback in company with her cousins, and these rides--more frequently than not--had for object the Priory--a comfortable nest which Curran had taken to himself near Rathfarnham--where they were regaled on tea and cakes by little Sara, the lawyer's baby child. Sara and Doreen became fast friends as they grew up--the faster probably because Doreen, who was the elder by several years, was strong as the sapling oak, while Sara was clinging like the honeysuckle.
Of course Curran, whose business kept him for many hours daily in the courts of law and House of Commons, could desire no better companion for his pet than the niece of the Countess of Glandore--the daughter of his friend and superior, Arthur Wolfe; and so as her cousins grew into men and left her more and more alone, she frequented more and more the Priory, where no one mocked her faith, and where she frequently met Theobald.
Wolfe-Tone and the Emmetts met frequently at Curran's, and their large-minded talk and broad generous views seemed to her like the wind which has passed over seaweed, compared with her aunt's narrow drone, the vain self-vaunting of my Lord Clare, the drunken ribaldry and coarse jests of her cousin Lord Glandore. So she, in her goldlaced riding-habit, had come too to the tryst that she might look on her hero once again; and for propriety's sake had brought as escort Papa Curran and gentle Sara, who, though only sixteen, was already casting timid sheep's-eyes at the younger of the two Emmetts--a gownsman at this time in the University.
Bashful Sara had relapsed into tears several times during Tone's discourse--a pale, fair, pretty creature she was, with a dazzling skin and light-blue eyes--and showed symptoms of hysteria when the patriot proposed a final libation. Not that she had any reason for emotion (such as Doreen might with more reason have displayed), being the eye-apple of a prosperous barrister who professed the dominant faith; but she knew that young Robert, whose shoes she would have knelt and kissed, was deeply bitten with the prevailing mania, and maybe she had besides a dim presentiment of the trouble which was to pour later upon her head and his. Be that as it may, she sank upon the ground now and sobbed, while Tone held forth the cup which Doreen had filled with a steady hand.
'A toast, dear friends--the last we may drink together!' he said; and gazed on the plashing waters, which glowed with the last gleam of the sun that was no more. 'I give you Mother Erin! May she soon be decked in green ribbons by a French milliner!'
Again and again did Doreen, a calm Hebe, fill the goblet, which was drained by each man present with a murmured 'Amen!'
The sun had died behind the Wicklow hills; still the Protestant chimes brayed fitfully across the sea, though the cannon at dusk were silent. Far off from the direction of Strogue Abbey came a noise of galloping hoofs, which grew gradually louder and louder, while every man looked at his neighbour as though expecting some new misfortune. No wonder they were uneasy, for their proceedings were watched, and a new disaster happened daily. Presently Mr. Curran, established as vidette, descried a well-known horseman, who pulled up sharply in the road, and dismounting, vaulted lightly over the wall.