then she led him into a large room, in which a table had been
prepared for breakfast, close to an English-looking open fire. "How
cold you must be, and how hungry! Shall I have breakfast for you at
once, or will you dress first? You are to be quite at home, you know;
exactly as though we were brother and sister. You are not to stand on
any ceremonies." And again she took him by the hand. He had hardly
looked her yet in the face, and he could not do so now because he
knew that she was crying. "Then I will show you to your room," she
said, when he had decided for a tub of water before breakfast. "Yes,
I will,--my own self. And I'd fetch the water for you, only I know it
is there already. How long will you be? Half an hour? Very well. And
you would like tea best, wouldn't you?"

"Certainly, I should like tea best."

"I will make it for you. Papa never comes down till near two, and we
shall have all the morning for talking. Oh, Phineas, it is such a
pleasure to hear your voice again. You have been at Loughlinter?"

"Yes, I have been there."

"How very good of you; but I won't ask a question now. You must put
up with a stove here, as we have not open fires in the bed-rooms. I
hope you will be comfortable. Don't be more than half an hour, as I
shall be impatient."

Though he was thus instigated to haste he stood a few minutes with
his back to the warm stove that he might be enabled to think of it
all. It was two years since he had seen this woman, and when they had
parted there had been more between them of the remembrances of old
friendship than of present affection. During the last few weeks of
their intimacy she had made a point of telling him that she intended
to separate herself from her husband; but she had done so as though
it were a duty, and an arranged part of her own defence of her own
conduct. And in the latter incidents of her London life,--that life
with which he had been conversant,--she had generally been opposed
to him, or, at any rate, had chosen to be divided from him. She had
said severe things to him,--telling him that he was cold, heartless,
and uninterested, never trying even to please him with that sort of
praise which had once been so common with her in her intercourse with
him, and which all men love to hear from the mouths of women. She
had then been cold to him, though she would make wretched allusions
to the time when he, at any rate, had not been cold to her. She had
reproached him, and ha