Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

He got up, however, and rubbed his sleek head against Michael's knee as he sat down in the black elbow-chair; but Mr. O'Brien still stood on the rug, shaking his head sadly.

'You have come, Captain. I made up my mind you would come to-day, to get at the rights of it; I told Mat so. "Depend upon it, the Captain will look us up," I said to him; "he is a man of action, and it is not likely he will let the grass grow under his feet. He will be round, sure enough, and you will have to be ready with your answers."'

'Where is your brother, Mr. O'Brien?'

'He has gone out for a bit, but he will be back presently. I told him not to go far. "You'll be wanted, you may take my word for it—you'll be wanted, Mat," I told him; and then he promised he would be round directly.'

'I am afraid this affair has been a great shock to you, Mr. O'Brien. Miss Ross once told me that you had no idea whom your brother married.'

'Well, sir, I can't say as much as that. Mat told me that the name of the girl he was going to wed was Olive Carrick, and that she came of respectable people; but he did not tell me much more than that. And now I put it to you, Captain—how was I to know that any woman would falsify her husband's name, and that she should be living close to my doors, as one might say?—for what is a matter of three miles? It gave me a sort of shiver—and I have not properly got rid of it yet—when I think of that dear young creature, whom Susan and me have always loved—that she should be entrapped through that woman's falseness into an engagement with Mat's son. It goes to my heart—it does indeed, Captain—to see that dear, sweet lady dragged into a connection that will only disgrace her.'

'My cousin would think it no disgrace to be connected with you, Mr. O'Brien;' for he knew too well Audrey's large-mindedness and absence of conventionality. 'She has always looked upon you as her friend.'

'Thank you, Captain; that is very handsomely said, and I wish my Prissy could have heard it, for she has done nothing but cry since the news reached her. "Rachel refusing to be comforted" is nothing compared to Prissy when the mood is on her; she literally waters all her meals with her tears. Yes, you mean it handsomely; but I am an old man, Captain Burnett, and know the world a bit, and I have the sense to see that Thomas O'Brien—honest and painstaking as he may be—is no fit connection for Dr. Ross's daughter. Why, to think she might be my niece and call me "uncle"!' and here the old man's face flushed as he spoke. 'It is not right; it is not as it should be. She must give him up—she must indeed, Captain!'

'I am afraid Dr. Ross holds that opinion, Mr. O'Brien. You will understand that he means no disrespect to you; but it is simply intolerable to him that any daughter of his should marry Matthew O'Brien's son. You see, I am speaking very plainly.'

'Yes, sir; and I am speaking just as plainly to you. In this sort of case it is no use beating about the bush. Mat has made his bed, and he must just lie on it; and his children—Heaven help them, poor young things!—must just lie on theirs too. Dear, dear! to think that when she was talking to me so pleasantly about Mollie and Kester, and—what is her lad's name?—that neither she nor I had an idea that she was speaking to their uncle! There, it beats me, Captain—it does indeed!' And there were tears in the old man's eyes.