the
mantle of her presence over the man she hated.

But stoop as she might, she never for a moment stooped to mask her
hate. In her incomings and her outgoings, in her risings-up and at
table with him, every movement of her body, the carriage of her head,
the glance of her eye, showed that she despised him; that she who now
suffered him was the same woman who had struck at his life, and,
failing, repented only the failure. In all she did, in parleying with
him, in bearing with his presence, in suffering his gaze, she made it
plain that she did it against her will; as the captive endures perforce
the company of the brigand in whose power he lies, but whom, when
opportunity offers, he will deliver with avidity to the cord or the
garotte. Because she must, and for her brother's sake, for the sake of
his name and pride and home, she was willing to do this, though she
abhorred it; and though every time that she broke bread with the
intruder, met his eyes, or breathed the air that he breathed, she told
herself that it was intolerable, that it must end.

Once or twice, feeling the humiliation more than she could bear, she
declared to her brother that the man must go. "Let him go!" she cried,
in uncontrollable excitement. "Let him go!"

"But he will not be going, Flavvy."

"He must go!" she replied.

"And Morristown his?" James would answer. "Ye are forgetting! Over and
above that, he's not one to do my bidding, nor yours!"

That was true. He would not go; he persisted in remaining and being
master. But it was not there the difficulty lay. If he had not made a
will before he came, a will that doubtless set the property of the
family for ever beyond James's reach, the thing had been simple and
Colonel John's shrift had been short. But now, to rid the earth of him
was to place the power in the hands of an unknown person, a stranger,
an alien, for whom the ties of family and honour would have no
stringency. True, the law was weak in Kerry. A writ was one thing, and
possession another. Whatever right a stranger might gain, it could only
be with difficulty and after the lapse of years that he would make it
good against the old family, or plant those about him who would ensure
his safety. But it did not do to depend on this. Within the last
generation, the McCarthys, a clan more powerful than the McMurroughs,
had been driven from the greater part of their lands; and on every side
English settlers were impinging on the old Iris