CHAPTER IX. A SURPRISE

In a little cabin standing on the extreme point of the promontory of Howth, which its fisherman owner usually let to lodgers in the bathing-season, Sir Brook Fossbrooke had taken up his abode. The view was glorious from the window where he generally sat, and took in the whole sweep of the bay, from Killiney, with the background of the Wicklow mountains, to the very cliffs at his feet; and when the weather was favorable,--an event, I grieve to say, not of every-day occurrence,--leading him often to doubt whether in its graceful outline and varied color he did not prefer it to Cagliari, with its waving orange groves and vine-clad slopes.

He made a little water-color drawing to enclose in a letter to Lucy; and now, as he sat gazing on the scene, he saw some effect of light on the landscape which made him half disposed to destroy his sketch and begin another.

“Tell your sister, Tom,” wrote he, “that if my letter to her goes without the picture I promised her, it is because the sun has just got behind a sort of tattered broken cloud, and is streaming down long slips of light over the Wicklow hills and the woods at their feet, which are driving me crazy with envy; but if I look on it any longer, I shall only lose another post, so now to my task.

“Although I remained a day in the neighborhood, I was not received at Holt. Sir Hugh was ill, and most probably never heard of my vicinity. Lady Trafford sent me a polite--a very polite--note of regrets, &c., for not being able to ask me to the house, which she called a veritable hospital, the younger son having just returned from Madeira dangerously