'Miss Gordon, I'm not joking. I'll have no hand, act, or part in it!' 'O'Connor, I will not have this everlasting stubbornness on your part. It is more than I can bear. Get me that russet morning-gown.' 'You won't have me, Miss Gordon? Very well. You know what you have to do if you won't have me, Miss Gordon. Pay me my wages, and let me go back to Cork. Cork is good enough for me. You're a lady, a real lady, and I never said anything else of you, to your face or behind your back. Cork mightn't be to your liking; but it's good enough for the like of me; so pay me and let me go.' 'How many more of these tiresome scenes are we to have before we part?' 'Pay me my money, and this will be the last. Give me what you owe me, and I'll put the salt sea between you and me. I'm not good enough for the grandeur of London and foreign places; but Cork will be proud to have me, and it's good enough for me; so if it's pleasing to you I'll go.' 'It is not pleasing to me you should go. And it is not pleasing to me you should lose your temper, O'Connor.' 'Lose my temper! There's for you! Lose my temper! Why, was it I offered to go down to breakfast after being up all night and looking like a ghost, instead of going to bed and resting until the roses came back again? Do I ever want to put on dresses that make me look a fright? Do I ever open my window of winter nights, and sit at it for hours? Do I ever give all my good stockings to a lying beggar, and wear my old darned ones a month longer? Do I ever forget to complain about the boots cutting my French thirty-shilling shoes? Temper, indeed! Well, if they can't stand my temper in foreign places they can in Cork.' 'O'Connor, I have not been to bed all night. I do not feel very strong now, and this is too much for me.' 'Eh?' 'I do not feel strong.' 'Then, child, why don't you lie down?' 'I want you, O'Connor, not to cross me to-day. I am not very strong now, and I have had great trouble.' 'Not well, and in great trouble! Child, child, why didn't you say that before? Trouble, trouble! Tell me all about it, child.' 'I don't know that I can. It didn't seem trouble at the time; but now I feel as if I had had a great deal of trouble lately.' 'Through me, child? Is it through my wilful and foolish ways? You ought to be used to them now. Sure you know I wouldn't vex you for all the world, only to do you good.' 'No, no, no! it isn't you, O'Connor, but myself. I have been the cause of a great deal of trouble to myself.' 'In what way, child? I'll pin a collar on the russet before you put it on. I'll be ready with it in a minute. Tell me all.' 'You are a good Roman Catholic, O'Connor!' 'I don't know about the good; but I was brought up a Catholic, and I am a Catholic still.' 'And you never have been anything else?' 'No, never, miss. But what has that to do with your trouble? You don't want me to turn? You don't think I haven't a proper respect for my mistress because she is not the same as myself?'