“Arrah, don’t say so, now! When was you ever so comfortable? Upon my conscience, it’s more like Paradise than anything else. If ye see the dinner we sit down to every day; and as for drink,--if it wasn’t that I sleep on a ground-floor, I’d seldom see a blanket!” “Well, certainly, Mike, I agree with you, these are hard things to tear ourselves away from.” “Aren’t they now, sir? And then Miss Catherine, I’m taching her Irish!” “Teaching her Irish! for Heaven’s sake, what use can she make of Irish?” “Ah, the crayture, she doesn’t know better; and as she was always bothering me to learn her English, I promised one day to do it; but ye see, somehow, I never was very proficient in strange tongues; so I thought to myself Irish will do as well. So, you perceive, we’re taking a course of Irish literature, as Mr. Lynch says in Athlone; and, upon my conscience, she’s an apt scholar.” “‘Good-morning to you, Katey,’ says Mr. Power to her the other day, as he passed through the hall. ‘Good-morning, my dear; I hear you speak English perfectly now?’ “‘_Honia mon diaoul_,’ says she, making a curtsey. “Be the powers, I thought he’d die with the laughing. “‘Well, my dear, I hope you don’t mean it,--do you know what you’re saying?’ “‘Honor bright, Major!’ says I,--‘honor bright!’ and I gave him a wink at the same time. “‘Oh, that’s it!’ said he, ‘is it!’ and so he went off holding his hands to his sides with the bare laughing; and your honor knows it wasn’t a blessing she wished him, for all that.” CHAPTER XV. THE CONFESSION. “What a strange position this of mine!” thought I, a few mornings after the events detailed in the last chapter. “How very fascinating in some respects, how full of all the charm of romance, and how confoundly difficult to see one’s way through!” To understand my cogitation right, _figurez-vous_, my dear reader, a large and splendidly furnished drawing-room, from one end of which an orangery in full blossom opens; from the other is seen a delicious little boudoir, where books, bronzes, pictures and statues, in all the artistique disorder of a lady’s sanctum, are bathed in a deep purple light from a stained glass window of the seventeenth century. On a small table beside the wood fire, whose mellow light is flirting with the sunbeams upon the carpet, stands an antique silver breakfast-service, which none but the hand of Benvenuto could have chiselled; beside it sits a girl, young and beautiful; her dark eyes, beaming beneath their long lashes, are fixed with an expression of watchful interest upon a pale and sickly youth, who, lounging upon a sofa opposite, is carelessly turning over the leaves of a new journal, or gazing steadfastly on the fretted gothic of the ceiling, while his thoughts are travelling many a mile away. The lady being the Senhora Inez; the nonchalant invalid, your unworthy acquaintance, Charles O’Malley. What a very strange position to be sure.