An hour later, Bernard sat comfortably ensconced in the easiest chair afforded by the living-room of the castle, with the infant O’Daly on his knee and a trio of grown-up people listening in unaffected pleasure to his sprightly talk. He had at the outset mistaken Mrs. O’Daly for a married sister of Kate’s--an error which he managed on the instant to emphasize by a gravely deliberate wink at Kate--and now held the mother’s heart completely by his genial attentions to the babe. He had set old O’Daly all aglow with eager interest by his eulogy of Muirisc’s mineral wealth as against all other districts in West Carbery. And all the time, through anecdote, business converse, exchange of theories on the rearing and precocity of infants and bright-flowing chatter on every subject tinder the sun, he had contrived to make Kate steadily conscious that she was the true object of his visit. Now and again the consciousness grew so vivid that she felt herself blushing over the embroidered altar-cloth at which she worked, in the shadow between the windows. “Well, sir,” said Bernard, dandling the infant tenderly as he spoke, “I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to be able, when I go back, to tell my father how I’d seen the O’Mahony castles here, and all that, right on the family’s old stamping-ground.” “Yer father died, ye say, manny years ago?” remarked O’Daly. “Sure, ‘manny’s not the word for it,” put in Mrs. O’Daly, with a flattering smile. “He’s but a lad yet, for all he’s seen and done.” “Nobody could grow old in such an air as this,” said the young man, briskly. “You, yourself, bear witness to that, Mrs. O’Daly. Yes, my father died when I was a youngster. We moved out West after the War--I was a little shaver then--and he didn’t live long after that.” “And would he be in the moines, too?” asked Cormac. “No; in the leather business,” answered Bernard, without hesitation. “To the end of his days, he was always counting on coming back here to Ireland and seeing the home of the O’Mahonys again. To hear him talk, you’d have thought there wasn’t another family in Ireland worth mentioning.” “’T was always that way wid thim O’Mahonys,” said O’Daly, throwing a significant glance over his wife and step-daughter. “I can spake freely to you, sir; for I’ll be bound ye favor yer mother’s side and ye were not brought up among them; but bechune ourselves, there’s a dale o’ nonsinse talked about thim same O’Mahonys. Did you ever hear yer father mintion an O’Daly?” “Well--no--I can’t say I did,” answered the young man, bending his mind to comprehension of what the old man might be driving at.