The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

The collegian, however, brought the boat safely to the shore, and procured a room for his wife in the dairy-woman's cottage, passing her off as a relative of Danny Mann's. She retired at once and Hardress and Kyrle sat talking together of Anne Chute. The sight of his friend's sufferings won Hardress's sympathies. He protested his disbelief in the idea of another attachment, and recommended perseverance.

"Trust everything to me," he said. "For your sake I will take some pains to become better known to this extraordinary girl, and you may depend on it you shall not suffer in my good report."

When the household was asleep, Hardress went to his wife's room, and found her troubled because of the strangeness of their circumstances.

"I was thinking," she said, "what a heart-break it would be to my father if anyone put it into his head that the case was worse than it is. No more would be wanting, but just a little word on a scrap of paper, to let him know that he needn't be uneasy, and he'd know all in time."

The suggestion appeared to jar against the young husband's inclinations. He replied that if she wished he would return with her to her home, and declare the marriage.

"If you are determined on certainly destroying our happiness," he continued, "your will shall be dearer to me than fortune or friends. If you have a father to feel for you, you will not forget, my love, that I have a mother whom I love as tenderly, and whose feelings deserve some consideration."

He took her hand and pressed it in a soothing manner.

"Come, dry those sweet eyes, while I tell you shortly what my plans shall be," he said.

"You have heard me speak of Danny Mann's sister, who lives on the side of the Purple Mountain, in the Gap of Dunlough? I have had two neat rooms fitted up for you in her cottage, and you can have books to read, and a little garden to amuse you, and a Kerry pony to ride over the mountains. In the meantimes I will steal a visit now and then to my mother, who spends the autumn in the neighbourhood. I will gradually let her into my secret, and obtain her forgiveness. I am certain she will not withhold it. I shall then present you to her. She will commend your modesty and gentleness; we will send for your father, and then where is the tongue that shall venture to wag against the fame of Eily Cregan!"

The young man left her, a little chagrined at her apparent slowness in appreciating his noble condescension. In his boyhood he had entertained a passion for his cousin, Anne Chute; but after the long separation of school and college, he had imagined that his early love was completely forgotten. The feeling with which he regarded her now was rather of resentment than indifference, and it had been with a secret creeping of the heart that he had witnessed what he thought was the successful progress of Kyrle Daly's attachment. It was under those circumstances that he formed his present hasty union with Eily. His love for her was deep, sincere, and tender. Her entire and unbounded confidence, her extreme beauty, her simplicity and timid deference made a soothing compensation to his heart for the coldness of the haughty, though superior beauty, whose inconstancy had raised his indignation.

In the morning, accompanied by Eily and Danny Mann, he sailed for Ballybunion, where they rested in a cavern while the hunchback sought an eligible lodging for the night. During his absence Hardress told Eily that Danny Mann was his foster-brother, and that he himself had been the cause of the poor fellow's deformity.

"When we were children he was my constant companion," he said. "Familiarity produced a feeling of equality, on which he presumed so far as to offer rudeness to a little relative of mine, a Miss Chute, who was on a visit to my mother. She complained to me, and my vengeance was summary. I seized him by the collar, and hurled him with desperate force to the bottom of a flight of stairs. An injury was done to his spine."

But Danny Mann had shown naught but good nature and kindly feeling ever since. His attachment had become the attachment of a zealot. Hardress was sometimes alarmed at the profane importance he attached to his master's wishes; he seemed to care but little what laws he might transgress when the gratification of Hardress's inclination was in question.

II.--Tempted

A week afterwards Hardress visited his parents at their Killarney residence, to find that his mother, with her niece, Anne Chute, had gone to a grand ball in the neighbourhood. His father was spending the night with his boon fellows, and a favourite old huntsman lay dying in a room near by. This retainer told his young master that Anne Chute loved him well, and that she deserved a better fortune than to love without return. Hardress went to bed, and was awakened by his mother upon her return. She reproved him for his long absence, and told him of the sensation his beautiful cousin was making in society. In the morning he met Anne with some consciousness and distress. A womanly reserve and delicacy made the girl unwilling to affect an intimacy that might not be graciously acknowledged. She treated him coldly, and began to read some silly novel of the day.