both remembered, however that Mr.
Phillis had accompanied his master to the foot of the stairs to receive
some directions, and then left him to return with the carriage.

"So, then, Phillis must have found it," said Cashel, rising hastily;
and, without a word of apology or excuse, he bade his host a hurried
good evening, and left the room.

"Won't you have the carriage? Will you not stay for a cup of tea?" cried
Mr. Kennyfeck, hastening after him. But the hall-door had already banged
heavily behind him, and he was gone. When Cashel reached his house, it
was to endure increased anxiety; for Mr. Phillis had gone out, and, like
a true gentleman's gentleman, none of the other servants knew anything
of his haunts, or when he would return. Leaving Cashel, then, to the
tortures of a suspense which his fervid nature made almost intolerable,
we shall return for a brief space to the house he had just quitted, and
to the drawing-room, where, in momentary expectation of his appearance,
the ladies sat, maintaining that species of "staccato" conversation
which can afford interruption with least inconvenience. It is our duty
to add, that we bring the reader back here less with any direct object
as to what is actually going forward, than to make him better acquainted
with the new arrival.

Had Miss O'Hara been the mere quiet, easy-going, simple-minded elderly
maiden she seemed to Cashel's eyes, the step on our part had not been
needed; she might, like some other characters of our tale, have been
suffered to glide by as ghosts or stage-supernumeraries do, unquestioned
and undetained; but she possessed qualities of a kind to demand somewhat
more consideration. Aunt Fanny, to give her the title by which she
was best known, was, in reality, a person of the keenest insight
into others,--reading people at sight, and endowed with a species of
intuitive perception of all the possible motives which lead to any
action. Residing totally in a small town in the west of Ireland, she
rarely visited the capital, and was now, in fact, brought up "special"
by her sister, Mrs. Kennyfeck, who desired to have her advice and
counsel on the prospect of securing Cashel for one or other of her
daughters. It was so far a wise step, that in such a conjuncture no
higher opinion could have been obtained.

"It was like getting a private hint from the Chancellor about a cause in
equity." This was Mr. Kennyfeck's own illustration.

Aunt Fanny was then there in