"No, none; and as for _her_,--to fling away such a love as that----" Here he pauses, and looks dreamily at the silver tankard before him. This last speech rather annoys Brian; to gloat over the remembrance of a love that had been callously cast aside to suit the exigences of the moment, seems to the younger man a caddish sort of thing not to be endured. ("Though what the mischief any pretty girl of nineteen could have seen in _him_," he muses, gazing with ill-concealed amazement at his uncle's ugly countenance, "is more than I can fathom.") "Perhaps it wasn't so deep a love as _you_ imagine," he cannot refrain from saying _a propos_ to his uncle's last remark, with a view to taking him down a peg. "It was, sir," says the Squire, sternly. "It was the love of a lifetime. People may doubt as they will, but I know _no_ love has superseded it." "Oh, he is in his dotage!" thinks Brian, disgustedly; and, rising from the table, he makes a few more trivial remarks, and then walks from the dining-room on to the balcony and so to the garden beneath. Finding his friend Kelly in an ivied bower, lost in a cigar, and possibly, though improbably, in improving meditation, he is careful not to disturb him, but, making a successful detour, escapes his notice, and turns his face towards that part of Coole that is connected with Moyne by means of the river. * * * * * At Moyne, too, dinner has come to an end, and, tempted by the beauty of the quiet evening, the two old ladies and the children have strolled into the twilit garden. There is a strange and sweet hush in the air--a stillness full of life--but slumberous life. The music of streams can be heard, and a distant murmur from the ocean; but the birds have got their heads beneath their wings, and the rising night-wind wooes them all in vain. Shadows numberless are lying in misty corners; the daylight lingers yet, as though loath to quit us and sink into eternal night. It is an eve of "holiest mood," full of tranquillity and absolute calm. "It is that hour of quiet ecstasy, When every rustling wind that passes by The sleeping leaf makes busiest minstrelsy." "You are silent, Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, glancing at her. "I am thinking. Such an eve as this always recalls Katherine; and yesterday _that meeting_,--all has helped to bring the past most vividly before me." "Ah, dear, yes," says Miss Penelope, regarding her with a furtive but tender glance. "How must _he_ have felt, when he thought what grief he brought to her young life!" "You are talking of mother?" asks Kit, suddenly, letting her large dark eyes rest on Miss Penelope's face, as though searching for latent madness there. "Yes, my dear, of course." "He would not have dared so to treat her had her father been alive or had we been blessed with a brother," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. "He proved himself a dastard and a coward."