pleasure."

"It will be with pain, sir, that I shall force myself into that person's
society; however, to oblige you, I shall do it."

"Consider, pray consider, Sir Robert," replied the old squire, all his
pride of family glowing strong within him, "just consider that my table,
sir, and my countenance, sir, and my sense of gratitude, sir, are a
sufficient guarantee to the worth and respectability of any one whom I
may ask to my house. And, Sir Robert, in addition to that, just reflect
that I ask him to meet my daughter, and, if I don't mistake, I think I
love, honor, and respect her nearly as much as I do you. Will you come
then, or will you not?"

"Unquestionably, sir, I shall do myself the honor."

"Very well," replied the old squire, clearing up at once--undergoing, in
fact, one of those rapid and unaccountable changes which constituted
so prominent a portion of his character. "Very well, Bobby; good-by, my
boy; I am not angry with you; shake hands, and curse Popery."

Until the morning of the day on which the two rivals were to meet, Miss
Folliard began to entertain a dreadful apprehension that the fright into
which the Red Rapparee had thrown her father was likely to terminate,
ere long, in insanity. The man at best was eccentric, and full of the
most unaccountable changes of temper and purpose, hot, passionate,
vindictive, generous, implacable, and benevolent. What he had seldom
been accustomed to do, he commenced soliloquizing aloud, and talking to
himself in such broken hints and dark mysterious allusions, drawing from
unknown premises such odd and ludicrous inferences; at one time brushing