The driver said it was eleven miles to Cappoquin, the guide-book
fourteen, but this difference of opinion, we find, is only the
difference between Irish and English miles, for which our driver had
an unspeakable contempt, as of a vastly inferior quality. He had,
on the other hand, a great respect for Mrs. Duddy and her
comfortable, cleanly, and courteous establishment (as per
advertisement), and the warmest admiration for the village in which
she had appropriately located herself, a village which he alluded to
as 'wan of the natest towns in the ring of Ireland, for if ye made a
slip in the street of it, be the help of God ye were always sure to
fall into a public-house!'

"We had better not tell the full particulars of this journey to
Salemina," said Francesca prudently, as we rumbled along; "though,
oddly enough, if you remember, whenever any one speaks disparagingly
of Ireland, she always takes up cudgels in its behalf."

"Francesca, now that you are within three or four months of being
married, can you manage to keep a secret?"

"Yes," she whispered eagerly, squeezing my hand and inclining her
shoulder cosily to mine. "Yes, oh yes, and how it would raise my
spirits after a sleepless night!"

"When Salemina was eighteen she had a romance, and the hero of it
was the son of an Irish gentleman, an M.P., who was travelling in
America, or living there for a few years,--I can't remember which.
He was nothing more than a lad, less than twenty-one years old, but
he was very much in love with Salemina. How far her feelings were