This was all very shocking: the ill-mannered allusion to hoary locks, the rash oath never to marry Shane, the truculent bearing. Mild Arthur's counsel was wise. My lady generally got the worst of it in conflicts with this girl. It would have been best to have vented her ill-humour upon Terence: who was forbearing towards his mother. But then her victories over him were too easily gained to be worth anything, for he was good-tempered, and respected his mother greatly; and besides, every well-ordered man will always gladly resign to a female antagonist the glory of winning a battle of words.
My lady stalked in silence up and down, retiring behind the entrenchments of her outraged dignity. But Doreen perceived that to make her triumph good she must dare another sortie, and disarm her antagonist; so, after a pause for breath, she repeated:
'I have shown you my cards, Lady Glandore--show me yours. You are bent upon my marrying Shane--the compliment is great--far greater than my poor worth deserves. Though you constantly fling insults at me about my manners, my blood, and my religion, yet you are willing--nay, anxious--condoning these crimes, to accept me as a daughter! Why? The lady of the Little House, who is good and charitable, if innocently vulgar, is a standing bugbear to you. Why? Yet, by a singular contradiction, you allow your paragon to make himself at home with her, and make much of her child, who, to be sure, is a Protestant, but low-born. She is penniless--I am an heiress: hence, of the two, I should be the better prize for him. I see that; but what, in Heaven's name! is to prevent his sallying forth in Dublin, and finding there a fitting partner? Sure there's not a noble Protestant family in Ireland that wouldn't jump at him! A drunkard, no doubt, and a fire-eater--which some folks are rude enough to translate murderer--what of that? It is the custom of his cloth. A coronet well filled with gold covers a multitude of sins! No doubt Mrs. Gillin would dearly like such a son-in-law--it's the way of the world, and I do not blame her--but you, I know, would not care for such a daughter as Norah. Are you not afraid that some fine morning holy Church will join them, and that you will come down to breakfast to find them in an edifying position on their knees, claiming mamma's blessing?'
My lady had sunk into a chair, her pale face paler.
'No, no,' she murmured; 'that could not be. He toys with a pretty wench as a young spark will. Why would I gladly have him marry you? Because I know he has faults--the faults of youth, which time will remedy--and I feel, dear Doreen, that your strong common-sense will be a stay to his weakness. Once united to you, he will change, and you will be very happy together.'
There was something so pitiable in this abject discomfiture--in this refusal to be insulted--that Miss Wolfe's resolution failed her. Yet her curiosity was too thoroughly roused to permit of dropping the subject.
'Then I'm to be the scapegoat?' she said, with a tinge of scorn. 'I'm to lick the whelp into shape--no matter if my heart is broken in the process. Thank you! A vow once sworn need never be repeated. Yet do not forget, aunt, if you please, that it is registered. He refuses to go into highborn society where noble ladies are, preferring play and duelling-clubs, and you dread his making a mésalliance, rather than which you would accept poor me as a pis-aller.' (Here the young lady made a curtsey.) 'Many thanks. Is this at all like the truth? Pardon my speaking plainly. It's best to be aboveboard. After this time we will, with your good leave, never return to the hateful subject. That I shall not be poor can surely claim no part in your calculations, for he is thirty times wealthier than I can ever be. Rich!' she repeated, with a harsh laugh. 'A rich Catholic will be a curiosity, n'est ce pas? If this is at all your course of thought, why not prevent his going to the Little House? Speak to Mrs. Gillin as harshly as you began to speak to me to-day, and there will surely be an end of the matter. Or,' pursued the crafty maiden, remembering Tone's last epistle, 'brush Norah from his mind by change of scene. Why not remove for a few months to Ennishowen? It is long since you were there. Your presence would do much to keep disloyal tenants quiet in these disloyal times. Would not that be a capital example? The boys used to love Ennishowen. Shane will forget the objectionable Norah whilst pursuing the shy seal or shooting wild birds round Malin Head. Do you remember the delirious delight of him and Terence when they dragged their first seal into the boat under Glas-aitch-é Cliff, and how you told me not to be afraid of looking over the garden parapet into the green water dashing so far below? Ah, those were days!' the girl pursued, kindling. 'Our only care whether the fish would bite or the shot carry----' then she was stopped by a lump rising in her throat, stirred by the thought of how different those days were from these, when the thunderous cloud was drawing lower, lower--and she--a reserved young lady--was becoming alarmingly familiarised with secret despatches; a political phantasmagoria; a threatened collision between two classes, whose hate was bubbling over.
The rebellious tears well-nigh burst their bonds; but a strong will was throned within that shapely head. My lady turned angrily upon her niece; for though discomfited and prepared to run up a flag of truce, it was not to be expected that she should endure this last speech without resenting it. Miss Wolfe's pertness harrowed her proud soul. She had pretended to look on her aunt as in her dotage--a toothless harridan, with no distinguishing attribute except white hair, and had presumed to charge her with ridiculous motives; had torn the dazzling glamour of his rank from Shane, exposing to view a skin as shaggy as the ass's; even going so far as to stigmatise him to his doting mother as a drunkard and a murderer; and, to cap all, had wound up with patronising advice. An ordinary lady of middle age would resent such treatment; how much more then the stern Countess of Glandore, whose nature was toughened by contact with the fire, who was always regarded with awe-stricken terror when she deigned to honour any of the Castle festivities, and who was quite a terrifying personage even to the wives and daughters of contemporary grandees.
Would the stubborn girl be true to her hasty vow? My lady feared she would, though for the moment she was too angry to consider calmly of it. Fierce wrath darted from under her squared brows; her high nose grew thinner; a network of small meshes twitched about her mouth; her long fingers tightly clutched the gold snuffbox which usually lay within them. Yet Miss Wolfe, having recovered her self-possession, looked sombrely at the frost-crowned volcano without a tremor.
'Doreen,' my lady said, 'if your father knew of you what I know, it would kill him; but I elect to hold my tongue, because I love my brother more than you your father. That you should be insolent to me is what I might expect; so I bear that with equanimity. Thank you for showing me how wrong I was in forming a Utopian scheme for joining my brother's child to Shane. We will say no more about that.' (Doreen heaved a sigh of relief.) 'The indelicacy of your proceedings has shown me that such a thing would be an insult to our name. What! a girl who corresponds clandestinely with a married man; who gallops like a trull about the country, regardless, not only of her own fair fame, but of her family's; who is on terms of familiar intercourse with a parcel of scatter-brained youths who make the capital of notoriety out of the jingle of sedition. Is this a girl to be received in respectable society? You spoke plainly; so do I. If I were to publish what I chance to know of you, no decent family would receive you within their doors. But I must bear with you for many reasons; your base mother's blood among the rest. You must be the skeleton in our cupboard. All I beg is, that you will rattle your bones less publicly.'