“Sarah, my good girl,” said he, whilst his voice, which at once became low and significant, quivered with suppressed rage—“what brought you here, I ax? Did any one send for you? or is there a matther of life and death on hands, that you tramp afther me in this manner—eh?”
“It may be life an' death for any thing I know to the contrary,” she replied; “you are angry at something, I see,” she proceeded—“but to save time, I want to spake to you.”
“You must wait till I go home, then, for I neither can nor will spake to you now.”
“Father, you will—you must,” she replied—“and in some private place too. I won't detain you long, for I haven't much to say, and if I don't say it now, it may be too late.”
“What the deuce, M'Gowan!” said Dick, “speak, to the young woman—you don't know but she may have something of importance to say to you.”
She glanced at the speaker, but with a face of such indifference, as if she had scarcely taken cognizance of him, beyond the fact that she found some young man there in conversation with her father.
Donnel, rather to take her from under the libertine gaze of his young friend, walked a couple of hundred yards to the right of the garden, where, under the shadow of some trees that over-hung a neglected fishpond, she opened the purport for her journey after him to the Grange.
“Now, in the divil's name,” he asked, “what brought you here?”
“Father,” she replied, “hear me, and do not be angry, for I know—at laste I think—that what I am goin' to say to you is right.”
“Well, madame, let us hear what you have to say.”