The girl smiled, with her face concealed by the brim of her sun-bonnet, and turned a little away from this brisk wooer, whose bursts of affectionate impudence were generally followed by long intervals of silence. ‘You adore too many, Desmond,’ ‘Sorra one but yourself.’ ‘Nonsense!’ cried Dulcie. ‘What were you doing with Rosie this morning in the stable-yard?’ ‘I mistook her for her mistress,’ said Desmond. ‘No, sure,’ he added, as the girl flushed a little angrily, ‘I don’t mane that.’ ‘I should think you didn’t “mane that!”’ said the young lady. ‘I should like to catch you kissing me.’ ‘I’m agreeable to be caught,’ returned the unabashable. ‘Oh, you Irish boys!’ cried Dulcie, with a transparent simulation of contempt. ‘You kiss anybody, so it’s no compliment.’ ‘That depends,’ said Desmond. ‘There’s kissing for duty, and kissing for interest, and kissing for love. There’s a mighty difference between kissing a rose and kissing a thorn. But, after all, what’s a kiss but a salutation?’ ‘You’re a great deal too forward,’ said Dulcie, with an almost matronly air of reproof. ‘Then get behind me,’ responded Desmond, ‘and I’ll go backward.’ The battle of wit was interrupted at this point by the sudden appearance of a man at the end of the ascent leading to the Castle. As he approached, the young couple fell apart a little, and advanced to meet him with a proper and respectful distance between them. ‘It’s Blake of Blake’s Hall,’ said Desmond, as he neared them. ‘In his usual condition of an afternoon,’ said Dulcie. The man, tall and strongly built, with a mane of black hair and whiskers streaked heavily with gray, and a flushed face, was reeling and tacking along the narrow path. His hat reposed at a dangerous angle at the back of his head, and his waistcoat was open to catch the cooling breeze. There was an air of jolly ferocity about him; but in spite of that and of the disorder of his dress and the other signs of dissipation he carried about with him, the least observant person in the world would hardly have taken him for anything but a gentleman. As he came level with the young people he stopped in his walk and in the scrap of Irish song he was chanting, and saluted the young lady with a wide and unsteady sweep of the hat. ‘Good morning, Lady Dulcie.’ The voice, though husky, and at that moment a little thick with liquor, was sound and full and sweet, and the brogue simply defied phonetics to render it. ‘Ye’re a cure for sore eyes. Desmond, ye divil, give us your fin.’ ‘You have been dining with my uncle, Mr. Blake?’ asked Lady Dulcie. ‘Faith, I have, then,’ returned Mr. Blake; ‘and if the company had only been as good as the dinner and the wine--and the whisky--’tis not yet I’d been after leaving it.’ ‘And what was the matter with the company?’ asked Desmond.