He had been horribly anxious for a termination to Anty’s sufferings; horribly impatient to feel himself possessor of the whole. From day to day, and sometimes two or three times a day, he had seen Dr Colligan, and inquired how things were going on: he had especially enjoined that worthy man to come up after his morning call at the inn, and get a glass of sherry at Dunmore House; and the doctor had very generally done so. For some time Barry endeavoured to throw the veil of brotherly regard over the true source of his anxiety; but the veil was much too thin to hide what it hardly covered, and Barry, as he got intimate with the doctor, all but withdrew it altogether. When Barry would say, “Well, doctor, how is she to-day?” and then remark, in answer to the doctor’s statement that she was very bad—“Well, I suppose it can’t last much longer; but it’s very tedious, isn’t it, poor thing?” it was plain enough that the brother was not longing for the sister’s recovery. And then he would go a little further, and remark that “if the poor thing was to go, it would be better for all she went at once,” and expressed an opinion that he was rather ill-treated by being kept so very long in suspense. Doctor Colligan ought to have been shocked at this; and so he was, at first, to a certain extent, but he was not a man of a very high tone of feeling. He had so often heard of heirs to estates longing for the death of the proprietors of them; he had so often seen relatives callous and indifferent at the loss of those who ought to have been dear to them; it seemed so natural to him that Barry should want the estate, that he gradually got accustomed to his impatient inquiries, and listened to, and answered them, without disgust. He fell too into a kind of intimacy with Barry; he liked his daily glass, or three or four glasses, of sherry; and besides, it was a good thing for him to stand well in a professional point of view with a man who had the best house in the village, and who would soon have eight hundred a-year. If Barry showed his impatience and discontent as long as the daily bulletins told him that Anty was still alive, though dying, it may easily be imagined that he did not hide his displeasure when he first heard that she was alive and better. His brow grew very black, his cheeks flushed, the drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and he said, speaking through his closed teeth, “D–––– it, doctor, you don’t mean to tell me she’s recovering now?” “I don’t say, Mr Lynch, whether she is or no; but it’s certain the fever has left her. She’s very weak, very weak indeed; I never knew a person to be alive and have less life in ’em; but the fever has left her and there certainly is hope.” “Hope!” said Barry—“why, you told me she couldn’t live!” “I don’t say she will, Mr Lynch, but I say she may. Of course we must do what we can for her,” and the doctor took his sherry and went his way.