and inquired how things were going on: he had especially enjoined that
worthy man to come up after his morning call at the inn, and get a
glass of sherry at Dunmore House; and the doctor had very generally
done so. For some time Barry endeavoured to throw the veil of brotherly
regard over the true source of his anxiety; but the veil was much too
thin to hide what it hardly covered, and Barry, as he got intimate
with the doctor, all but withdrew it altogether. When Barry would say,
"Well, doctor, how is she to-day?" and then remark, in answer to the
doctor's statement that she was very bad--"Well, I suppose it can't
last much longer; but it's very tedious, isn't it, poor thing?" it
was plain enough that the brother was not longing for the sister's
recovery. And then he would go a little further, and remark that "if
the poor thing was to go, it would be better for all she went at once,"
and expressed an opinion that he was rather ill-treated by being kept
so very long in suspense.

Doctor Colligan ought to have been shocked at this; and so he was, at
first, to a certain extent, but he was not a man of a very high tone
of feeling. He had so often heard of heirs to estates longing for
the death of the proprietors of them; he had so often seen relatives
callous and indifferent at the loss of those who ought to have been
dear to them; it seemed so natural to him that Barry should want the
estate, that he gradually got accustomed to his impatient inquiries,
and listened to, and answered them, without disgust. He fell too into a
kind of intimacy with Barry; he liked his daily glass, or three or four
glasses, of sherry; and besides, it was a good thing for him to stand
well in a professional point of view with a man who had the best house
in the village, and who would soon have eight hundred a-year.

If Barry showed his impatience and discontent as long as the daily