"Now tell me, dear," said Father Murphy, seating himself beside her, "what ye mane to say to yere cousin when ye get in to see him. Spake freely, for the devil a word the spalpeens yonder shall hear of what ye're going to say, by rason of their being all fast asleep."
"My cousin!" exclaimed Clara. "Who? what?"
"Your cousin Edmund, that ye're come so far to see," resumed the father.
"My cousin!" replied Clara; "Oh! ay, true. It was my cousin that fought with him, you know. But I don't want to see my cousin."
"Not want to see your cousin!" reiterated Father Murphy, his eyes almost starting from his head in the excess of his astonishment. "Why did you come here then?"
"To—to see Prince Ferdinand," said Clara in a faltering voice, looking down, and blushing.
Father Murphy's astonishment was now far too great for words, and he could only look at her in speechless horror as he revolved some plan in his mind for getting her quietly back to her friends.
"How wild she looks!" thought he: "she must be put in confinement; there is no saying to what lengths, so strange a delusion may carry her."
Whilst the poor father was thus cogitating and repeating to himself divers coaxing forms of words, by the help of which he hoped to persuade her to return, the automaton again stopped, and, the prison door flying open, the officer beckoned Clara to advance. She flew towards him. "Clara! Clara dear!" said Father Murphy, "had you not better go home?" But Clara heard him not; she was already in the prison; the doors had closed, and the automaton sentinel had again resumed his measured, beaten track.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried the unhappy Father Murphy, "what will I do? How will I get her out? Poor Sir Ambrose—he will break his heart. I dare say he knows nothing about it. These kind of fits always come on suddenly."