“I am the man myself,” said Reilly, “but you don’t know me, I am so completely disguised.  Don’t you know my voice?”

“Merciful Father!” said the cook, “I’m in a doldrum; can I be sure that you don’t come from Sir Robert Whitecraft, the notorious blackguard?”

“Lanigan, I am Willy Reilly:  my voice ought to tell you so; but I wish to see and speak with my dear Cooleen Bawn.”

“Oh, my God, sir!” replied Lanigan, “but this love makes strange transmigrations.  She won’t know you, sir.”

“Make your mind easy on that point,” replied Reilly; “only let her know that I am here.”

“Come down to the kitchen then, sir, and I shall put you into the servants’ hall, which branches off it.  It is entered, besides, by a different door from that of the kitchen, and while you stay there—­and you can pass into it without going through the kitchen—­I will try to let her know where you are.  She has at present a maid who was sent by Sir Robert Whitecraft, and she is nothing else than a spy; but it’ll go hard, or I’ll baffle her.”

He accordingly placed Reilly in the servants’ hall, and on his way to the drawing-room met Miss Folliard going to her own apartment, which commanded a view of the front of the house.  He instantly communicated to her the fact of Reilly’s presence in the servants’ hall; “but,” added Lanigan, “you won’t know him—­his own mother, if she was livin’, wouldn’t know a bone in his body.”

“Oh!” she replied, whilst her eyes flashed fearfully, in fact, in a manner that startled the cook—­“oh! if he is there I shall soon know him.  He has a voice, I think—­he has a voice!  Has he not, Lanigan?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Lanigan, “he has a voice, and a heart too.”

“Oh! yes, yes,” she said, “I must go to him; they want to marry me to that monster—­to that bigot and persecutor, on this very day month; but, Lanigan, it shall never be—­death a thousand times sooner than such a union.  If they attempt to bind us, death shall cut the link asunder—­that I promise you, Lanigan.  But I must go to him—­I must go to him.”

She ran down the stairs as she spoke, and Lanigan, having looked after her, seemed deeply concerned.

“My God!” he exclaimed, “what will become of that sweet girl if she is forced to marry that wealthy scoundrel?  I declare to my God I hardly think she is this moment in her proper senses.  There’s a fire in her eyes; and something in her manner, that I never observed before.  At all events, I have locked the door that opens from the kitchen into the servants’ hall, so that they cannot be interrupted from that quarter.”

When the Cooleen Bawn entered, she shrank back instinctively.  The disguise was so complete that she could not impose even on her imagination or her senses.  The complexion was different, in fact, quite sallow; the beard long, and the costume such as we have described it.  There was, in fact, something extremely ludicrous in the meeting.  Here was an elegant and beautiful young woman of fashion, almost ready, as it were, to throw herself in the arms of a common pauper, with a beard upon him better than half an inch long.  As it was, she stopped suddenly and retreated a step or two, saying, as she did so: