His lordship welcomed the appearance of the two young people as a relief from the further discussion of a painful topic.

‘So, young madam,’ he said to Dulcie, pinching her ear, ‘you’ve come back! And where have you been all the afternoon?’

‘On the sands,’ said Dulcie. ‘You’re not angry with me, are you?’ she asked, kissing him in a coaxing fashion, for the tone in which he had spoken was a little sharp. ‘I was so sorry to hear that you had been upset.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened if you had been at the table,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘I suppose I have to thank you, sir,’ he continued to Desmond, ‘for her absence? You’re pretty spectacles, the pair of you,’ he went on, looking at the disordered dresses, flushed faces and untidy hair of the young couple. ‘You’ve been up to some mischief, I suppose?’

‘Not this time,’ said Desmond, smiling. ‘Hold your tongue, boy!’ snapped his lordship, with sudden and inexplicable ill-temper. ‘Don’t bandy words with me—hold your tongue!’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Desmond.

‘Can’t you find something better to do than to go wandering about the place, mixing with all the loafers and blackguards in the county? Can’t you speak? You can chatter fast enough when you’re not asked to.’

‘You told me to hold my tongue, sir,’ said Desmond, falling back on Irish prevarication and broadening his brogue.

‘I shall have to take some order with you, sir,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘Come to my study to-morrow after breakfast. It’s time you were doing something—time you began to think of—of your future. There, there,’ he continued, patting Desmond’s shoulder, ‘I’m not angry with you, my boy. I’ve been upset, and in my state of health the least thing excites me—ask Peebles.’

‘Ay,’ said the Scot, ‘that’s true—you’ve a troublesome temper.’

‘Never mind,’ said Dulcie; ‘we’ll coddle you up and comfort you. I’ll play a game of backgammon with you, and if that doesn’t cure you, I’ll send over to Galway for mamma.’

‘For your mother!’ cried Kilpatrick. ‘My sister Matilda!’

‘She’s a capital nurse,’ said Dulcie. ‘She’ll set you right in a jiffy—as Desmond would say.’ The bit of slang passed unnoticed by his lordship in his terror at the suggestion it conveyed.

‘Good heavens, child! Matilda will be praying over me day and night. I’m not quite so bad as that—I won’t be prayed over; but for this little cardiac weakness, I’m in excellent condition. Ask Peebles. There, there, go and get your dinner, and take Desmond with you.’

‘I shall come back afterwards,’ said Dulcie.

‘Yes, yes!’ said her uncle. ‘Come back by-and-by and give me my game of backgammon.’

‘I met Mr. Blake on the road, sir,’ said Desmond. ‘He asked me to deliver a message to your lordship.’

‘Well,’ snapped Kilpatrick, ‘what has the drunken brute to say to me?’

‘Just to apologize for what he did and said this afternoon.’

‘His repentance is mighty sudden,’ said Kilpatrick.

‘He didn’t repent at all till Desmond talked to him,’ said Dulcie, glad to get in a word in favour of her sweetheart.

‘So you’ve been giving Blake a lesson in manners, eh?’ said the old man. ‘And what did you say to him, and how did he take it?’

Desmond recounted the interview.

‘He took it like mother’s milk, sir. Sure he knew he was in the wrong. He’s not a bad fellow, if you know how to humour him.’

Peebles coughed behind his hand a dubious note, and Kilpatrick, catching the old man’s eye, said with something of his former testiness:

‘Well, well, that will do—go and eat your dinner. Peebles, wait on Lady Dulcie.’

The two young people and the old servitor left the room together, and Kilpatrick, sinking back into the seat he had quitted, sat for some time plunged in silent thought. Conseltine, leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, took advantage of the shadow with which the room was filled, and of his brother’s abstraction, to watch him narrowly. The old lord sighed once or twice, and gave one or two movements of impatience, and once the sound of a broken murmur reached Conseltine’s ear, in which he distinguished only the word ‘Moya.’

‘Dick,’ said Kilpatrick, suddenly turning towards him, ‘I must provide at once for Desmond—I simply must do it—I should be a cad if I didn’t.’

The intently watchful look which Conseltine’s face had worn was replaced by his general expression of suavity as he came forward into the ray of light which was yet coming through the great oriel window.

‘My dear Henry,’ he said smoothly, ‘you are perfectly right. ’Tis the dictate of nature and justice—it does you credit.’ Kilpatrick, who was anything but a fool, looked at his brother with a curious, quick, questioning glance. Conseltine replied to it as if to a speech.

‘I know, my dear Henry, I know! You’ve been thinking me grasping, and avaricious, and heartless, all this time, now, haven’t you? And why? Just because I’ve felt it my duty, as your brother and Richard’s father, to safeguard the interests of the family. The title goes to Richard, anyhow; and ’tis but common-sense, as you said just now yourself, that the bulk of the property should go with it. ’Tis mighty little I can leave him, and a lord without soil to his foot or a guinea in his pocket would be a queer spectacle, wouldn’t he? ’Tis not Lord Kilpatrick, anyhow, that shall be seen in that predicament; but you can provide for Desmond, too. You can give him all he has a right to expect, and still leave enough for Richard.’

The argument was unanswerable, the manner and voice with which it was put were suave, persuasive, honest; but Kilpatrick’s only answer was to shoot another quick, questioning glance at his brother’s face, and to tap the carpet with his foot.

‘What would you call a proper provision?’ he asked, after an interval of silence.

‘Give the boy a profession, and—well, some hundreds a year. He’s bright and clever, and with that income, and a calling in his fingers, if he can’t make his way in the world, ’tis a pity.’

‘A profession!’ said Kilpatrick musingly. ‘I don’t know what the boy’s fit for, unless it’s for a soldier or a sailor.’

‘Bad pay and poor prospects,’ said Conseltine. ‘Why not the Church?’

His lordship went off into a sudden cackle of laughter.

‘The Church! Fancy Desmond a priest! Faith, ’twould be a pretty parish that he had charge of!’

‘The bar?’ suggested his brother.

‘No; Desmond hates lawyers almost as much as Blake himself—it’s in the blood, I suppose—I’m none too fond of them myself. I’ll think it over, Dick, I’ll think it over; don’t bother me about it any more at present. Nothing shall be done without your knowledge and—without your knowledge, at all events.’

‘You are tired?’ asked Conseltine.

‘Yes, tired to death.’

‘Well, I’ll leave you to yourself. Goodnight; sleep well, and you’ll be as sound as a trout in the morning. I’ll send up Peebles to help you to undress.’

He went; and Kilpatrick, rising from his seat, began to pace the room from end to end among the gathering shadows.

‘What the devil makes Dick Conseltine so tender all of a sudden?’ he asked himself. ‘Dictate of nature and justice, indeed! He hates the boy like poison, that I’m sure of. I can see it in his eye, sly and smooth as he is, every time he looks at him; and so does that bull-headed young fool, his son. It’s natural, I suppose. Faith, then, one sees the hatred that money breeds—brother hating brother, father hating son, son father; the meanness, lying, ingratitude, intriguing; I’d rather be the poorest peasant on my estate. I’d rather be Desmond, poor boy; he knows his friends, at least. Nobody cajoles and flatters him.’

He fell silent again, and paced the room with a slower step.

‘Poor Moya! Gad! how it all comes back to me! If she had been only a little more of a lady, just a shade more possible as my wife! She was a lady in heart and feeling; the truest I ever met, I think. I threw away a jewel when I cast her off—nineteen years ago.

‘Nineteen years ago this month, and it is all as clear and vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Poor girl! I can see her face now as it was when I broke the secret to her. It will haunt me till I die, and after, if all tales are true. I was a scoundrel! It was a vile business. There are moments when I think Peebles is right: that it is my plain duty to let family considerations slide, own the boy, and leave him all. It wrings my heart to see him, handsome, manly, courageous, loved by everybody—my son! my own son!—and then look at that long-shanked cub of Dick’s, and think that he, Desmond, is worth a million of him, worth a planetful of the stupid, ugly cur. How like his mother he is! Sometimes he frightens me; it is as if the dead came out of the grave to accuse me.’

He paused in his walk, and looked round the darkened chamber as if he feared an actual hidden presence there; then he walked to his desk, struck a match, and applied it to the wick of a small shaded reading-lamp; then, stealthily, and with more than one glance over his shoulder, he unlocked the desk, touched a spring, and drew from a secret drawer a scrap of paper and a miniature portrait. It was to the paper he gave his first attention. The writing, originally bold and heavy, had faded to a faint rusty red, the paper was stained and spotted. ‘Take your child,’ he read falteringly; ‘and as you use him may God use you.’ He sat staring at the flame of the lamp, blurred by the mist of gathering tears.

‘As you use him, may God use you,’ he repeated half aloud. ‘I’ll do my duty by the boy—I must! Before God, if Moya were alive!—No, even that wouldn’t mend matters—it wouldn’t even mend her broken heart. It was not that she wasn’t my lady—not that her vanity was wounded—it was the treachery! She loved me—she thought me an honest man. It was her pride in me that was broken. God forgive me! I acted like a villain!’

He took up the portrait and bent his eyes upon it with a long, regretful gaze. It was the work of a true artist, who had caught and reproduced with actual fidelity the features and expression of the proud and tender girl Kilpatrick had betrayed. The bright, gay face, instinct with youth and happiness, beamed from the picture; the sensitive lips seemed almost to tremble as the world-worn old man gazed at them. The dress was that of the better class of an Irish peasant of twenty years ago; but the hand which held the shawl about the throat wore jewelled rings.

‘She sent back the rings—every scrap and every rag I’d ever given her,’ said Kilpatrick. They lay in the secret drawer, and rattled as his blanched fingers drew them forth. ‘She wouldn’t wear the dress I’d given her when she had this taken. “Let me be as I was when you first knew me, when the great lord wasn’t ashamed to tell the poor girl he loved her.”’

With a sudden passionate gesture of love and remorse, he carried the picture to his lips.

‘My lord!’ said a voice so startlingly close that it seemed to be at his very ear. Kilpatrick turned with a start and beheld a dim form standing in the shadow of the door.

‘Confound you!’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

‘Just Peebles,’ said that worthy with his usual slow Scotch drawl.

‘Confound you,’ said his lordship again, ‘why didn’t you knock?’

‘I knocked twice,’ said Peebles, ‘and got nae answer. Mr. Conseltine told me ye needed me.’

Kilpatrick dropped the letter and the miniature back into the desk and closed and locked it before speaking again.

‘Is Feagus still below?’

‘Ay,’ said Peebles. ‘He’s drinking with Mr. Conseltine and Mr. Richard. He’s just as drunk as a lord—begging your lordship’s pardon. It’s an old proverb, and like the most o’ proverbs, it has its exceptions.’

‘Drunk, eh?’ said his lordship musingly.

‘Verra drunk!’ said Peebles. ‘It’s seldom he gets such liquor as comes out o’ your cellar, my lord.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Kilpatrick absently; ‘I suppose so. Well, you can help me to undress, Peebles, and then you can tell Mr. Feagus—you can tell him—tell him I’ll write him regarding the business I have in hand.’

Peebles, his face hidden in the darkness which surrounded the little circle of light cast by the reading-lamp, smiled sourly.

‘Verra weel, my lord,’ he said; and Kilpatrick, rising, accepted his arm as a support to his bedroom.

Half an hour later Peebles descended to the dining-room, where he found Mr. Feagus with his head on the table and one arm curled lovingly round an empty bottle.

It took some trouble to rouse him, and even when awakened he was for a time oblivious of his surroundings. At last, dimly defining the figure of Peebles, he took him for Blake, and rising with a sort of paralytic alertness, bade the old man stand upon his defence. Peebles, from a safe distance, proclaimed his identity; thereupon the lawyer, relinquishing his pugnacious ardour, wept copiously, and would have embraced him.

‘Gang hame—gang hame, now!’ said Peebles, repulsing him; thereupon Mr. Feagus’s tears ran faster. ‘My lord will send for ye if he should hae need o’ ye.’

‘You’ll come and have a drink with me, just for the sake of old times, Mr. Peebles?’ said Feagus.

‘Ye’ve had drink enough,’ said Peebles; ‘gang hame!’ and bundled him through the French window opening on the lawn. Finding himself in the open air, Feagus made straight by instinct for the high road. Peebles stood at the window watching him tacking and reeling along the path until he had passed out of sight, and was about to return and close the window, when he heard a voice hailing him—

‘Misther Paybles! Misther Paybles!’ Peering into the darkness, he made out a dim form approaching him.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘’Tis me, sure—Larry.’

Peebles recognised the lad, a henchman of Desmond’s, a village loafer, generally to be found in the company either of the Squireen or of Lady Dulcie’s maid, Rosie.

‘Weel, Larry! What hae ye there?’

‘’Tis a letther!’ panted Larry.

‘For my lord?’

‘No, ’tis for yourself.’

‘And where did ye get it?’

‘I met a poor woman at the foot o’ the hill, and she asked me if I knew one Misther Paybles. “Sure I do,” says I. “Then,” ses she, “will ye earn the blessin’ on a poor craythur by givin’ this into his own hand?” “I will,” ses I—and here I am.’

Peebles accepted the scrap of paper Larry held out to him, and walking to the chimneypiece, read it by the light of the lamp: ‘One who comes from Kenmare, and who knew Moya Macartney’—he started, but, remembering Larry’s presence, controlled himself and read on—‘would like to speak with him who was the best of friends to that poor colleen before she died. Will you meet the writer at ten tomorrow night in the churchyard by the lake-side and hear her message, for poor Moya’s sake?’

Peebles stood silent for a moment, the paper shaking in his fingers.

‘Who gave ye this, did ye say?’ he asked.

‘A stranger,’ said Larry. ‘She said there was no answer.’

‘Verra weel,’ said Peebles, in a tone as near commonplace as he could make it. ‘I’ll attend to it.’ Larry saluted and vanished.

Left alone, Peebles mused:

‘What’s the meaning of this? What mystery’s here? A droll kind o’ message, and a droll kind o’ place for an appointment, and a droll hour o’ the night for a respectable man to be gadding about a kirkyard. Weel, weel! Maybe it’s one of Moya’s kin anxious to hear news aboot the bairn. Be she friend or foe, angel or deil, I’ll be there.’