should he find a girl like that in
England with such colour, such eyes, such hair, such innocence,--and
then with so sweet a voice?

As he hurried down the hill to the beach at Coolroone, where Morony was
to meet him with the boat, he could not keep himself from comparisons
between Kate O'Hara and Sophie Mellerby. No doubt his comparisons were
made very incorrectly,--and unfairly; but they were all in favour of the
girl who lived out of the world in solitude on the cliffs of Moher. And
why should he not be free to seek a wife where he pleased? In such an
affair as that,--an affair of love in which the heart and the heart
alone should be consulted, what right could any man have to dictate to
him? Certain ideas occurred to him which his friends in England would
have called wild, democratic, revolutionary and damnable, but which,
owing perhaps to the Irish air and the Irish whiskey and the spirit of
adventure fostered by the vicinity of rocks and ocean, appeared to him
at the moment to be not only charming but reasonable also. No doubt he
was born to high state and great rank, but nothing that his rank and
state could give him was so sweet as his liberty. To be free to choose
for himself in all things, was the highest privilege of man. What
pleasure could he have in a love which should be selected for him by
such a woman as his aunt? Then he gave the reins to some confused notion
of an Irish bride, a wife who should be half a wife and half not,--whom
he would love and cherish tenderly but of whose existence no English
friend should be aware. How could he more charmingly indulge his spirit
of adventure than by some such arrangement as this?

He knew that he had given a pledge to his uncle to contract no marriage
that would be derogatory to his position. He knew also that he had given
a pledge to the priest that he would do no harm to Kate O'Hara. He felt
that he was bound to keep each pledge. As for that sweet, darling girl,
would he not sooner lose his life than harm her? But he was aware that
an adventurous life was always a life of difficulties, and that for such
as live adventurous lives the duty of overcoming difficulties was of all
duties the chief. Then he got into his canoe, and, having succeeded in
killing two gulls on the Drumdeirg rocks, thought that for that day he
had carried out his purpose as a man of adventure very well.

During February and March he was often on the coast, and hardly one
visit did he mak