CHAPTER XIX.
AN UNWELCOME VISIT If Mathew Kearney had been put to the question, he could not have concealed the fact that the human being he most feared and dreaded in life was his neighbour Miss Betty O'Shea.
With two years of seniority over him, Miss Betty had bullied him as a child, snubbed him as a youth, and opposed and sneered at him ever after; and to such an extent did her influence over his character extend, according to his own belief, that there was not a single good trait of his nature she had not thwarted by ridicule, nor a single evil temptation to which he had yielded that had not come out of sheer opposition to that lady's dictation.
Malevolent people, indeed, had said that Mathew Kearney had once had matrimonial designs on Miss Betty, or rather, on that snug place and nice property called 'O'Shea's Barn,' of which she was sole heiress; but he most stoutly declared this story to be groundless, and in a forcible manner asseverated that had he been Robinson Crusoe and Miss Betty the only inhabitant of the island with him, he would have lived and died in celibacy.
Miss Betty, to give her the name by which she was best known, was no miracle of either tact or amiability, but she had certain qualities that could not be disparaged.

She was a strict Catholic, charitable, in her own peculiar and imperious way, to the poor, very desirous to be strictly just and honest, and such a sure foe to everything that she thought pretension or humbug of any kind--which meant anything that did not square with her own habits--that she was perfectly intolerable to all who did not accept herself and her own mode of life as a model and an example.
Thus, a stout-bodied copper urn on the tea-table, a very uncouth jaunting-car, driven by an old man, whose only livery was a cockade, some very muddy port as a dinner wine, and whisky-punch afterwards on the brown mahogany, were so many articles of belief with her, to dissent from any of which was a downright heresy.
Thus, after Nina arrived at the castle, the appearance of napkins palpably affected her constitution; with the advent of finger-glasses she ceased her visits, and bluntly declined all invitations to dinner.

That coffee and some indescribable liberties would follow, as postprandial excesses, she secretly imparted to Kate Kearney in a note, which concluded with the assurance that when the day of these enormities arrived, O'Shea's Barn Would be open to her as a refuge and a sanctuary; 'but not,' added she, 'with your cousin, for I'll not let the hussy cross my doors.' For months now this strict quarantine had lasted, and except for the interchange of some brief and very uninteresting notes, all intimacy had ceased between the two houses--a circumstance, I am loth to own, which was most ungallantly recorded every day after dinner by old Kearney, who drank 'Miss Betty's health, and long absence to her.' It was then with no small astonishment Kate was overtaken in the avenue by Miss Betty on her old chestnut mare Judy, a small bog-boy mounted on the croup behind to act as groom; for in this way Paddy Walshe was accustomed to travel, without the slightest consciousness that he was not in strict conformity with the ways of Rotten Row and the 'Bois.' That there was nothing 'stuck-up' or pretentious about this mode of being accompanied by one's groom--a proposition scarcely assailable--was Miss Betty's declaration, delivered in a sort of challenge to the world.

Indeed, certain ticklesome tendencies in Judy, particularly when touched with the heel, seemed to offer the strongest protest against the practice; for whenever pushed to any increase of speed or admonished in any way, the beast usually responded by a hoist of the haunches, which invariably compelled Paddy to clasp his mistress round the waist for safety--a situation which, however repugnant to maiden bashfulness, time, and perhaps necessity, had reconciled her to.

At all events, poor Paddy's terror would have been the amplest refutation of scandal, while the stern immobility of Miss Betty during the embrace would have silenced even malevolence.
On the present occasion, a sharp canter of several miles had reduced Judy to a very quiet and decorous pace, so that Paddy and his mistress sat almost back to back--a combination that only long habit enabled Kate to witness without laughing.
'Are you alone up at the castle, dear ?' asked Miss Betty, as she rode along at her side; 'or have you the house full of what the papers call "distinguished company" ?' 'We are quite alone, godmother.