creditable enough to make me some day look on him as I used to do in
the good old times. My heart gave a great bound, and remembering how
Harold said I discouraged him, out came, "How do you know that I don't?"

How he sprang up! And--no, I can't tell what we said, only we found it
was no new beginning, only taking up an old, old precious
thread--something brought it all out. He had talked it all over with
Harold when he came back from Florence, and had taken home a little
hope which he said had helped him through the solitary hours of his
recovery. So it was Harold who, after all, gave us to one another.

Outspoken Dora informed us, before the day was much older, that the
Longs had asked whether that was her brother, or my young man. So we
took them into our confidence, and even borrowed "the trap" for one of
the roughest and the sweetest drives that ever we had, through those
splashing lanes, dropping Dermot at his lodgings to write his letters,
while the harvest moon made a path over the sea, no longer leaden, but
full of silvery glittering light. There had something come back into
the air which made us feel that life was worth living, after all!

Next morning the good people, who were much excited about our affairs,
sent the pony for him, and he came in full force with that flattering
Irish tongue of his, bent on persuading me that, old lovers as we were,
with no more to find out about one another, there was nothing to wait
for. 'How could he go back by himself (what a brogue he put on! yet
the tears were in his eyes) to his great desolate castle, with not a
living man in it at all at all, barring the Banshee and a ghost or two;
and as I had nothing to do, and nowhere to go, why not be married then
and there without more ado? If I refused, he should think it was all my
pride, and that I couldn't take that "ornary object," as he had
overheard himself described that day. (As if I did not love him the
better for that marred complexion!) His mother? His uncle? They had
long ago repented of having come between us ten years ago, and were
ready to go down on their knees to any dacent young woman who would
take him, let alone a bit of an heiress, who, though not to compete
with the sixty-thousand pounder, could provide something better than
praties and buttermilk for herself at Killy Marey.'

I could not help thinking dear Harold might have remembered Killy
Marey's needs when he gave me that half of his means.