"Sweet Mary, shield ye darlint!" ejaculated Mrs. O'Toole, as she looked after her nursling, "but we've rested so long widout them thieving attorneys, I don't like to see them beginin' their letthers agin. J. Moore, esquire! the divil go wid such esquires! amen."
Fearful and wonderful indeed is our spiritual organisation. Reason may smile at fears, unsubstantiated by any tangible motive, but the instant her accents of reproof have ceased, lo! the same formless and gnawing terror steals back, undiminished by one iota of its influence, to depress the soul, until again routed by reason's disciplined troops; a true guerilla warfare in which the irregular forces, ever ready to disperse and reassemble, always repulsed, but never conquered, are sure to wear out resistance in the end.
So Kate Vernon, in spite of her clear and cultivated intellect, her sound judgment, and her sense of the ridiculous, could not keep nurse's evil omen from dwelling on her mind; more, ay, a thousand times more, than her grandfather's apparent anxiety about the intelligence communicated by Lady Desmond, and they accomplished the circuit of the walls, silently, or, exchanging occasional remarks very foreign from the subject occupying both their minds.
At length the Colonel said abruptly—
"Kate, my child, what do you think of Lady Desmond's invitation?"
"Oh! I think it a delightful plan; but you, grandpapa, do you think we shall be able to accept it?"
"At present decidedly not. I must not be farther from Dublin than I am—I fear I shall have much letter writing, if indeed I am not obliged to go to Ireland myself; if matters come right again, I shall certainly endeavour to let the Priory, and take you to Italy; this complete retirement is not good or safe."
"Safe!" said Kate, laughing. "Why I thought it was quite selon les regles, of all romances, that a dethroned prince, and his lovely and interesting daughter, like you and I, should be safe only while in obscurity."
"According to old romances, I grant; but according to reality, there is more danger in the strong contrasts which the occasional breaks in a life of retirement present, in the tone of mind it engenders, than in the action of society, at least to you, Kate."
"Danger! Oh, tempt me not to boast," cried Kate, endeavouring to draw her grandfather from his moralising mood. "You may despise old romances, but you are nevertheless assuming the tone of some melancholy Count Alphonso, warning a sensitive and angelic Lady Malvina, against the world in general: dearest and best," she continued, in graver and tenderer tones, "I must swim down the troubled current of life, as you have done before me, and meet its difficulties and trials—leave me then to the same guide by whose aid, you have passed many a dangerous rapid safely, to float in a smooth, though diminutive haven at last."