him; but this had been taken by the son as a part of his father's
malady.

Everything around him was now melancholy, and therefore these terms
had not seemed to have any special force of their own. He did not
think it necessary to warn Clara that bad days might be in store for
both of them, or to caution her that their path of love might yet be
made rough.

"And whom do you think I met, just now, on horseback?" he asked, as
soon as this question of her visit had been decided.

"Mr. Owen Fitzgerald, probably," said Clara. "He went from hence
about an hour since."

"Owen Fitzgerald here!" he repeated, as though the tidings of such a
visit having been made were not exactly pleasant to him. "I thought
that Lady Desmond did not even see him now."

"His visit was to me, Herbert, and I will explain it to you. I was
just going to tell you when you first came in, only you began about
Castle Richmond."

"And have you seen him?"

"Oh yes, I saw him. Mamma thought it best. Yesterday he wrote a note
to me which I will show you." And then she gave him such an account
of the interview as was possible to her, making it, at any rate,
intelligible to him that Owen had come thither to claim her for
himself, having heard the rumour of her engagement to his cousin.