Denis O'Hara appropriately lived in Gay Street. As all the world knows, Gay Street runs steeply from the green exclusiveness of Queen Square, to the lofty elegance, the columnal solemnity of the King's Circus. Being a locality of the most fashionable, Gay Street was apt to be deserted enough at those hours when Fashion, according to the unwritten laws of Bath, foregathered in other quarters.
Towards eight o'clock of the evening of the day after his duel with Sir Jasper, Mr. Denis O'Hara, seated at his open window, disconsolate in a very gorgeous dressing-gown and a slight fever fit, found it indeed so damnably deserted that the sight of a sedan-chair and two toiling chairmen coming up the incline became quite an object of interest to him.
"To be sure," thought he, "don't I know it's only some old hen being joggled home to roost, after losing sixpence and her temper at piquet? But what's to prevent me beguiling myself for a bit by dreaming of some lovely young female coming to visit me in me misfortune? Sure it's the rats those fellows are, that not one of them would keep me company to-night! There's nobody like your dear friends for smelling out an empty purse. Musha!" said Mr. O'Hara, putting his head out of the window, "if the blessed ould chair isn't stopping at me own door!"
A bell pealing through the house confirmed his observation.
"It's a woman! By the powers, it's a woman! Tim, Tim, ye devil!" roared Mr. O'Hara, "come to me this minute, or I'll brain ye."
Conscious of his invalid negligé, he rose in his chair; but, curiosity proving stronger than decorum, was unable to tear himself from his post of vantage at the window.
"Oh! the doaty little foot!" he cried in rapture, as arched pink-silk instep and a brocade slipper of daintiest proportion emerged, in a little cloud of lace, from the dim recesses of the chair, upon his delighted vision.
He turned for a moment to bellow again into the room:
"Tim, you limb of Satan, where are you at all? Sure, I'm not fit to be seen by any lady, let alone such a foot as that!"
When he popped his head once more through the window, only the chairmen occupied the street.
"It's for the ground floor, of course; for the French marquis," said O'Hara, and sat down, feeling as flat as a pancake.
The next instant a knock at the door sent the quick blood flying to the red head. The "limb of Satan," more generally known as Tim Mahoney, an ingratiating, untidy fellow, with a cunning leer and a coaxing manner, stood ogling his master on the threshold; then he jerked with his thumb several times over his shoulder, and grinned with exquisite enjoyment.
"What is it?" said O'Hara fiercely.
Tim winked, and jerked his thumb once more.
"Speak, ye ugly divil, or by heavens I'll spoil your beauty for you!"
"Your sisther!" cried Tim, with a rumbling subterraneous laugh.
"Me sisther, man?"
"Ay, yer honour," said the scamp, who, as O'Hara's foster-brother, was well aware that his master boasted no such gentle tie. "Sure she's heard your honour's wounded, and she's come to visit you. 'I'm Misther O'Hara's sister,' says she——"
"And am I not?" cried a sweet voice behind him, "or, if not, at least a very, very dear cousin, and, in any case, I must see Mr. O'Hara at once, and alone."
"To be sure," cried O'Hara, eagerly rising in every way to the situation, and leaping forward. "Show in the lady, you villain!—Oh, my darling!" cried the Irishman, opening generous arms, "but I am glad to see ye!—Tim, you scoundrel, shut the door behind you!"
The visitor was much enveloped, besides being masked. But there was not a moment's hesitation in the ardour of Mr. O'Hara's welcome.
"Sir, sir!" cried a faint voice from behind the folds of lace, "what conduct is this?"
"Oh, sisther darling, sure, me heart's been hungering for you! Another kiss, me dear, dear cousin!"
"Mr. O'Hara!" cried Mistress Bellairs, in tones of unmistakable indignation; tore off her mask, and stood with panting bosom and fiery eye.
"Tare and ages!" exclaimed the ingenuous Irishman. "If it isn't me lovely Kitty!"
"Mistress Bellairs, if you please, Mr. O'Hara," said the lady with great dignity. "I am glad to see, sir, that that other passion of which I have heard so much has not interfered with the strength of your family affections."
She sat down, and fanned herself with her mask, and, looking haughtily round the room, finally fixed her gaze, with much interest, upon the left branch of the chandelier.
For a second, Mr. O'Hara's glib tongue seemed at a loss; but it was only for a second. With a graceful movement he gathered the skirts of his fine-flowered damask dressing-gown more closely over the puce satin small clothes, which, he was sadly conscious, were not in their first freshness, besides bearing the trace of one over-generous bumper of what he was fond of calling the ruby-wine. Then, sinking on one knee, he began to pour a tender tale into the widow's averted ear.
"And it's the fine ninny ye must think me, Kitty darling—I beg your pardon, darling; ma'am it shall be, though I vow to see ye toss your little head like that, and set all those elegant little curls dancing, is enough to make anyone want to start you at it again. Oh, sure, it's the divine little ear you have, but, be jabers, Kitty, if it's the back of your neck you want to turn on me—there now, if I was to be shot for it, I couldn't help it—with the little place there just inviting my lips."
"Keep your kisses for your sister, sir, or your cousin!"
"What in the world—— And d'ye think I didn't know you?"
"A likely tale!"
"May I die this minute if I didn't know you before ever you were out of the ould chair!"
"Pray, sir," with an angry titter, "how will even your fertile wits prove that?"
"Sure, didn't I see the little pink foot of you step out, and didn't I know it before ever it reached the ground?"
"Lord forgive you!" said Mistress Kitty gravely. But a dimple peeped.
He had now possessed himself of her hand, which he was caressing with the touch of the tentative lover, tenderer than a woman's, full of mute cajoling inquiry.
"I hope the Lord may forgive me for setting up and worshipping an idol. I believe there's something against that in the commandments, darling, but sure, maybe, old Moses wouldn't have been so hard on those Israelites if they'd had the gumption to raise a pretty woman in the midst of them, instead of an old gilt Calf."
At this word, Mistress Kitty gave a perceptible start.
"Oh, dear," said she, "never, never speak to me of that dreadful animal again! Oh, Denis," she said, turning upon him for the first time her full eyes, as melting and as pathetic just then as it was in their composition to look, "I am in sad, sad trouble, and I don't know what to do!"
Here she produced a delicate handkerchief, and applied it to her eyelashes, which she almost believed herself had become quite moist.
"Me jewel!" cried Mr. O'Hara, preparing to administer the first form of consolation that occurred to him.
"Be quiet," said Mistress Kitty testily. "Get up, sir! I have to consult you. There, there, sit down. Oh, I am in earnest, and this is truly serious."
Mr. O'Hara, though with some reluctance, obeyed. He drew his chair as near to the widow's as she would permit him, and pursed his lips into gravity.
"You know my Lord Verney," began the fascinating widow.
"I do," interrupted the irrepressible Irishman, "and a decent quiet lad he is, though, devil take him, he makes so many bones about losing a few guineas at cards that one would think they grew on his skin!"
"Hush," said she. "I can't abide him!"
Mr. O'Hara half started from his armchair.
"Say but the word," said he, "and I'll run him through the ribs as neat as——"
"Oh, be quiet," cried the lady, in much exasperation. "How can you talk like that when all the world knows he is to be my husband!"
"Your husband!" Mr. O'Hara turned an angry crimson to the roots of his crisp red hair. Then he stopped, suffocating.
"But I don't want to marry him, you gaby," cried Mistress Kitty, with a charming smile.
Her lover turned white, and leaned back against the wing of his great chair. The physician had blooded him that morning by way of mending him for his loss of the previous night, and he felt just a little shaky and swimming. Mistress Kitty's eye became ever more kindly as it marked those flattering signs of emotion.
"The noodle," said she vindictively, "mistook the purport of some merely civil words, and forthwith went about bleating to all Bath that he and I were to be wed."
"I'll soon stop his mouth for him," muttered Mr. O'Hara, moved to less refinement of diction than he usually affected. "Oh, Kitty," said he, and wiped his pale brow, "sure, it's the terrible fright you've given me!"
Here Mistress Bellairs became suddenly and inexplicably agitated.
"You don't understand," said she, and stamped her foot. "Oh, how can I explain? How are people so stupid! I was obliged to go to his rooms this morning—a pure matter of friendship, sir, on behalf of my Lady Standish. Who would have conceived that the calf would take it for himself and think it was for his sake I interfered between him and that madman, Sir Jasper! 'Tis very hard," cried Mistress Kitty, "for a lone woman to escape calumny, and now there is my Lord Verney, after braying it to the whole of Bath, this moment writing to his insufferable old mother. And there is that cockatoo aunt of his looking out her most ancient set of garnets and strass for a wedding-gift. And, oh dear, oh dear; what am I to do?"
She turned over the back of her chair, to hide her face in her pocket-handkerchief. In a twinkling, O'Hara was again at her feet.
"Soul of my soul, pulse of my heart!" cried he. "Sure, don't cry, Kitty darling, I'll clear that little fellow out of your way before you know where you are."
"Indeed, sir," she said, flashing round upon him with a glance surprisingly bright, considering her woe. "And is that how you would save my reputation? No, I see there's nothing for it," said Mistress Kitty with sudden composure, folding up her handkerchief deliberately, and gazing up again at the chandelier with the air of an early martyr, "there's nothing for it but to pay the penalty of my good-nature and go live at Verney Hall between my virtuous Lord Verney and that paragon of female excellence and domestic piety, his mother."
"Now, by Saint Peter," cried O'Hara, springing to his feet, "if I have to whip you from under his nose at the very altar, and carry you away myself, I'll save you from that, me darling!"
"Say you so?" cried the lady with alacrity. "Then, indeed, sir," she proceeded with sweetest coyness, and pointed her dimple at him, "I'll not deny but what I thought you could help me, when I sought you to-night. There was a letter, sir," she said, "which yester morning I received. 'Twas signed by a lock of hair——"
"Ah, Kitty!" cried the enraptured and adoring Irishman, once more extending wide his arms.
"Softly, sir," said she, eluding him. "Let us to business."