"Holy Saint Malachi, hare the sonn of The Macnamaras talkin' loike a choild!" cried The Randal.
"I don't care who hears me," said Standish. "I'm sick of hearing about my forefathers; no one cares about them nowadays. I wanted years ago to go out into the world and work."
"Work--a Macnamara work!" cried The Randal horror-stricken.
"I told you so," said The Macnamara, in the tone of one who finds sudden confirmation to the improbable story of some enormity.
"I wanted to work as a man should to redeem the shame which our life as it is at present brings upon our family," said the young man earnestly--almost passionately; "but I was not allowed to do anything that I wanted. I was kept here in this jail wasting my best years; but to-day has brought everything to an end. You say you will disinherit me, father, but I have from this day disinherited myself--I have cast off my old existence. I begin life from to-day."
Then he turned away and went out of the room, leaving his father and his guest in dumb amazement before their punch. It was some minutes before either could speak. At last The Randal took adraught of the hot spirit, and shook his head thoughtfully.
"Poor boy! poor boy! he needs to be looked after till he gets over this turn," he said.
"It's all that girl--that Daireen of the Geralds," said The Macnamara. "I found a paper with poetry on it for her this morning, and when I forced him he confessed that he was in love with her."
"D'ye tell me that? And what more did ye do, Mac?"
"I'll tell you," said the hereditary prince, leaning over the table.
And he gave his guest all the details of the visit to the Geralds at length.
But poor Standish had rushed up the crumbling staircase and was lying on his bed with his face in his hands. It was only now he seemed to feel all the shame that had caused his face to be red and pale by turns in the drawing-room at Suanmara. He lay there in a passion of tears, while the great owls kept moaning and hooting in the tower just outside his window, making sympathetic melody to his ears.
At last he arose and went over to the window and stood gazing out through the break in the ivy armour of the wall. He gazed over the tops of the trees growing in a straggling way down the slope to the water's edge. He could see far away the ocean, whose voice he now and again heard as the wind bore it around the tower. Thousands of stars glittered above the water and trembled upon its moving surface. He felt strong now. He felt that he might never weep again in the world as he had just wept. Then he turned to another window and sent his eyes out to where that great peak of Slieve Docas stood out dark and terrible among the stars. He could not see the house at the base of the hill, but he clenched his hands as he looked out, saying "Hope."