These remarks encouraged Dermot to persevere, even with more determination than before. Every moment he could spare from his duties, he was now engaged in reading.
His poor mother looked on with astonishment that her boy should thus become so learned, and more than once it entered into her mind that it was a pity she had not allowed him to follow Father O’Rourke’s suggestion, and become a priest. “He would have been a bishop to a certainty,” she exclaimed to herself—“and only think to be a holy bishop, certain of heaven. What a great man he would have been made, a cardinal, and that he would have been, if His Holiness the Pope had ever become acquainted with him. I wonder now if it’s too late, but I’m afraid after what he said to Father O’Rourke that his Reverence will never give him a helping hand.”
Such and similar thoughts frequently passed through the mind of the poor widow. More than once she ventured to broach the subject to her son, but he shook his head with a look of disgust.
“If I am ever to be otherwise than what I am, I hope never to become like Father O’Rourke. No, no, mother I have other thoughts, and do not, I pray you, ever ask me again to become a priest.”
The next visit Dermot paid to the castle, he was detained longer than usual by another lady insisting on taking his portrait. His feelings rather rebelled against this. He had been flattered when Lady Sophy had first taken it, but he did not much like the idea of being made a figure for the exercise of other fair artists’ pencils, still his natural feelings of politeness prevented him from showing the annoyance he felt.
While the lady was proceeding with her work, he gathered from the conversation around him that some one of importance was expected at the castle, and he at length made out that the young heir—Lord Fitz Barry—was looked for during the afternoon.
Dermot had never seen him, for during the previous summer, he had not returned home, having remained with his tutor in England. He found that the carriage had been sent for the young Lord to the neighbouring town.
As soon as the ladies dismissed him, Dermot took his way along the road by which he would reach the castle.
He had not long to wait before he saw an open carriage with the Earl in it, and by his side a young boy bearing a strong resemblance to Lady Nora.
There were the same blue eyes and the fair complexion and rich auburn air possessed by his sister, at the same time there was a manly look and expression in his countenance—boy as he was—which at once won Dermot’s respect.