At an early hour the ensuing day, Captain Emmet proposed a drive to Donallan Park, which he said was a fair domain, fully deserving the attention of the Duke of Altamonte. Cassandra and Heloisa clamorously seconded this proposal. In this energetic family, Mrs. Emmet alone gave the eye and the ear a little repose. Stretched upon a couch in languid listless inactivity, she gazed upon the bustling scene before her, as if entirely unconnected with it; nor seemed to know of greater suffering than when called from her reveries, by the acute voices of her family, to the bustle and hurry of common life. To the question of whether she would accompany them to Donallan Park, she answered faintly, that she would not go. A fat and friendly lieutenant, who fondly hung over her, urged her to relent, and with some difficulty, at length, persuaded her to do so. Every one appeared much pleased with their excursion, or possibly with some incident during their drive, which had made any excursion agreeable. Of Donallan Park, however, Calantha remembered little: this alone, she noted, that as they walked through a shrubbery, Lord Glenarvon suddenly disengaging himself from Miss Emmet, who had monopolized his arm, gathered a rose—the only rose in bloom (it being early in the summer) and turning back, offered it to Calantha. She felt confused—flattered perhaps; but if she were flattered by his giving it to her, she had reason to be mortified by the remark which accompanied the gift. “I offer it to you,” he said, “because the rose at this season is rare, and all that is new or rare has for a moment, I believe, some value in your estimation.” She understood his meaning: her eye had been fixed upon him with more than common interest; and all that others said and Miss Emmet affected, he thought, perhaps, that she could feel. There was no proof she gave of this, more unequivocal, than her silence. Her spirits were gone; a strange fear of offending had come upon her; and when Lady Trelawney rallied her for this change, “I am not well,” she said; “I wish I had never come to Cork.”