d
Herbert was deprived of his inheritance.

CHAPTER XXX.

PALLIDA MORS.

Mr. Somers, returning from Hap House, gave Owen's message to Herbert
Fitzgerald, but at the same time told him that he did not think any
good would come of such a meeting.

"I went over there," he said, "because I would not willingly omit
anything that Mr. Prendergast had suggested; but I did not expect
any good to come of it. You know what I have always thought of Owen
Fitzgerald."

"But Mr. Prendergast said that he behaved so well."

"He did not know Prendergast, and was cowed for the moment by what he
had heard. That was natural enough. You do as you like, however; only
do not have him over to Castle Richmond."

Owen, however, did not trust solely to Mr. Somers, but on the
following day wrote to Herbert, suggesting that they had better meet,
and begging that the place and time of meeting might be named. He
himself again suggested Hap House, and declared that he would be at
home on any day and at any hour that his "cousin" might name, "only,"
as he added, "the sooner the better." Herbert wrote back by the same
messenger, saying that he would be with him early on the following
morning; and on the following morning he drove up to the door of Hap
House, while Owen was still sitting with his coffee-pot and knife and
fork before him.

Captain Donnellan, whom we saw there on the occasion of our first
morning visit, was now gone, and Owen Fitzgerald was all alone in his
home. The captain had been an accustomed guest, spending perhaps half
his time there during the hunting season; but since Mr. Prendergast
had been at Hap House, he had been made to understand that the master
would fain be alone. And since that day Owen had never hunted, nor
been noticed in his old haunts, nor had been seen talking to his old
friends. He had remained at home, sitting over the fire thinking,
wandering up and down his own avenue, or standing about the stable,
idly, almost unconscious of the grooming of his horses. Once and once
only he had been mounted; and then as the dusk of evening was coming
on he had trotted over quickly to Desmond Court, as though he had
in hand some purport of great moment; but if so he changed his mind
when he came to the gate, for he walked on slowly for three or four
hundred yards beyond it, and then turning his horse's head, slowly
made his way back past the gate, and then trotted quickly home to Hap
House. In these moments of