“Yes. I said you were a clever sort of person, that could do a number of things well, and that I for one did n't quarrel with your vanity or conceit, but thought them rather good fun.” “So they are! and we 'll laugh at them together,” said he, rising, and preparing to set out “What a blessing to find one that really understands me! I wish to heaven that you were not engaged!” “And who says I am?” cried she, almost fiercely. “Did I dream it? Who knows? The fact is, my dear Miss Becky, we do talk with such a rare freedom to each other, it is pardonable to mix up one's reveries with his actual information. How do you call that ruin yonder?” “Dunluce.” “And that great bluff beyond it?” “Fairhead.” “I 'll take a long walk to-morrow, and visit that part of the coast.” “You are forgetting you are to call on Mrs. Butler.” “So I was. At what hour are we to be here?” “There is no question of 'we' in the matter; your modesty must make its advances alone.” “You are not angry with me, _cariasima_ Rebecca?” “Don't think that a familiarity is less a liberty because it is dressed in a foreign tongue.” “But it would 'out;' the expression forced itself from my lips in spite of me, just as some of the sharp things you have been saying to me were perfectly irrepressible?” “I suspect you like this sort of sparring?” “Delight in it” “So do I. There's only one condition I make: whenever you mean to take off the gloves, and intend to hit out hard, that you 'll say so before. Is that agreed?” “It's a bargain.” She held out her hand frankly, and he took it as cordially; and in a hearty squeeze the compact was ratified. “Shall I tell you,” said she, as they drew nigh the Abbey, “that you are a great puzzle to us all here? We none of us can guess how so great a person as yourself should condescend to come down to such an out-o'-the-world spot, and waste his fascinations on such dull company.” “Your explanation, I 'll wager, was the true one: let me hear it.” “I called it eccentricity; the oddity of a man who had traded so long in oddity that he grew to be inexplicable, even to himself, and that an Irish country-house was one of the few things you had not 'done,' and that you were determined to 'do' it.” “There was that, and something more,” said Maitland, thoughtfully. “The 'something more' being, I take it, the whole secret.” “As you read me like a book, Miss Rebecca, all I ask is, that you 'll shut the volume when you 've done with it, and not talk over it with your literary friends.” “It is not my way,” said she, half pettishly; and they reached the door as she spoke. CHAPTER VIII. SOME EXPLANATIONS