They were now standing again, and Fred raised his hat and rubbed his forehead as he endeavoured to arrange the words in which he could best propose his scheme to the priest. He had not yet escaped from the idea that because Father Marty was a Roman Catholic priest, living in a village in the extreme west of Ireland, listening night and day to the roll of the Atlantic and drinking whisky punch, therefore he would be found to be romantic, semi-barbarous, and perhaps more than semi-lawless in his views of life. Irish priests have been made by chroniclers of Irish story to do marvellous things; and Fred Neville thought that this priest, if only the matter could be properly introduced, might be persuaded to do for him something romantic, something marvellous, perhaps something almost lawless. In truth it might have been difficult to find a man more practical or more honest than Mr. Marty. And then the difficulty of introducing the subject was very great. Neville stood with his face a little averted, rubbing his forehead as he raised his sailor's hat. "If you could only read my heart," he said, "you'd know that I am as true as steel."
"I'd be lothe to doubt it, Mr. Neville."
"I'd give up everything to call Kate my own."
"But you need give up nothing, and yet have her all your own."
"You say that because you don't completely understand. It may as well be taken for granted at once that she can never be Countess of Scroope."
"Taken for granted!" said the old man as the fire flashed out of his eyes.
"Just listen to me for one moment. I will marry her to-morrow, or at any time you may fix, if a marriage can be so arranged that she shall never be more than Mrs. Neville."
"And what would you be?"
"Mr. Neville."
"And what would her son be?"
"Oh;--just the same,--when he grew up. Perhaps there wouldn't be a son."
"God forbid that there should on those terms. You intend that your children and her children shall be--bastards. That's about it, Mr. Neville." The romance seemed to vanish when the matter was submitted to him in this very prosaic manner. "As to what you might choose to call yourself, that would be nothing to me and not very much I should say, to her. I believe a man needn't be a lord unless he likes to be a lord;--and needn't call his wife a countess. But, Mr. Neville, when you have married Miss O'Hara, and when your uncle shall have died, there can be no other Countess of Scroope, and her child must be the heir to your uncle's title."