ned it. She'll never forgive me, instead of retiring for my
coffee, sitting here like a man--and a man of that old hard-drinking
school, Mathew, that has brought all the ruin on Ireland.'

'Here's to their memory, anyway,' said Kearney, drinking off his glass.

'I'll drink no toasts nor sentiments, Mathew Kearney, and there's no
artifice or roguery will make me forget I'm a woman and an O'Shea.'

'Faix, you'll not catch me forgetting either,' said Mathew, with a droll
twinkle of his eye, which it was just as fortunate escaped her notice.

'I doubted for a long time, Mathew Kearney, whether I'd come over myself,
or whether I 'd write you a letter; not that I'm good at writing, but,
somehow, one can put their ideas more clear, and say things in a way that
will fix them more in the mind; but at last I determined I'd come, though
it's more than likely it's the last time Kilgobbin will see me here.'

'I sincerely trust you are mistaken, so far.'

'Well, Mathew, I'm not often mistaken! The woman that has managed an estate
for more than forty years, been her own land-steward and her own law-agent,
doesn't make a great many blunders; and, as I said before, if Mathew has no
friend to tell him the truth among the men of his acquaintance, it's well
that there is a woman to the fore, who has courage and good sense to go up
and do it.'

She looked fixedly at him, as though expecting some concurrence in the
remark, if not some intimation to proceed; but neither came, and she
continued.

'I suppose you don't read the Dublin newspapers?' said she civilly.

'I do, and every day the post brings them.'

'You see, therefore, without my telling you, what the world is saying about
you. You see how they treat "the search for arms," as they head it, and
"the Maid of Saragossa!" O Mathew Kearney! Mathew Kearney! whatever
happened the old stock of the land, they never made themselves ridiculous.'

'Have you done, Miss Betty?' asked he, with assumed calm.

'Done! Why, it's only beginning I am,' cried she. 'Not but I'd bear a deal
of blackguarding from the press--as the old woman said when the soldier
threatened to run his bayonet through her: "Devil thank you, it's only your
trade." But when we come to see the head of an old family making ducks and
drakes of his family property, threatening the old tenants that have been
on the land as long as his own people, raising the rent here, evicting
there, distressing the people's minds when th