she nodded her head to him and walked away.

It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left alone, and that Dick
had stolen away, though when or how he could not say.

'I'm glad the boy was not listening to her, for I'm downright ashamed that
I bore it,' was his final reflection as he strolled out to take a walk in
the plantation.

CHAPTER LXXX

A NEW ARRIVAL

Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was deficient in the
persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the accession of Joe Atlee to the company
made up in a great measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner
was announced, and even in the few minutes in the drawing-room, his gay and
lively manner, his pleasant flow of small talk, dashed with the lightest
of epigrams, and that marvellous variety he possessed, made every one
delighted with him.

'I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did my utmost to make them
turn back with me. You may laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honours
of another man's house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself without a
rival.'

'I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is nothing I like as
much as a well-filled table,' said Kearney.

'Not that their air and manner,' resumed Joe, 'impressed me strongly with
the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen
for some time, and I believe I told them so.'

'Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?' asked Dick.

'Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating
society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for
Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn
sensibilities--so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very
sound of them betrays unreality.'

'But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?' asked
Nina calmly.

'Certainly not for any man but Walpole.'

'And why not Walpole?'

'Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you
to whom the secret anatomy of the "heart" is no mystery, and who understand
how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his
small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself--there
could be no other estrangement would affect _him_.'

'This was not always your estimate of your _friend_,' said Nina, with a
marked emphasis of the last word.

'Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hou