Of all men your father is the
last to encumber his estates in a manner unknown to his agent, and to
pay off the interest in secret."

"What is it then, Mr. Somers?"

"I do not know." And then Mr. Somers paused. "Of course you have
heard of a visit he received the other day from a stranger?"

"Yes; I heard of it."

"People about here are talking of it. And he--that man, with
a younger man--they are still living in Cork, at a little
drinking-house in South Main Street. The younger man has been seen
down here twice."

"But what can that mean?"

"I do not know. I tell you everything that I do know."

Herbert exacted a promise from him that he would continue to tell him
everything which he might learn, and then rode back to Castle
Richmond.

"The whole thing must be a delusion," he said to himself; and
resolved that there was no valid reason why he should make Clara
unhappy by any reference to the circumstance.

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET.

I must now take my readers back to that very unsavoury public-house
in South Main Street, Cork, in which, for the present, lived Mr.
Matthew Mollett and his son Abraham.

I need hardly explain to a discerning public that Mr. Matthew Mollett
was the gentleman who made that momentous call at Castle Richmond,
and flurried all that household.

"Drat it!" said Mrs. Jones to herself on that day, as soon as she
had regained the solitude of her own private apartment, after having
taken a long look at Mr. Mollett in the hall. On that occasion she
sat down on a low chair in the middle of the room, put her two hands
down substantially on her two knees, gave a long sigh, and then made
the above exclamation,--"Drat it!"

Mrs. Jones was still thoroughly a Saxon, although she had lived for
so many years among the Celts. But it was only when she was quite
alone that she allowed herself the indulgence of so peculiarly Saxon
a mode of expressing either her surprise or indignation.

"It's the same man," she said to herself, "as come that day, as sure
as eggs;" and then for five minutes she maintained her position,
cogitating. "And he's like the other fellow too," she continued.
"Only, somehow he's not like him." And then another pause. "And yet
he is; only it can't be; and he ain't just so tall, and he's older
like." And then, still meditating, Mrs. Jones kept her position for
full ten minutes longer; at the end of which time she got up and
shook h