and merely muttered, as he read it, "Confound her, low-minded slut!
friends, indeed! what business has she with friends, except such as
I please?--if I'd the choosing of her friends, they'd be a strait
waistcoat, and the madhouse doctor. Good Heaven! that half my
property--no, but two-thirds of it,--should belong to her!--the stupid,
stiff-necked robber!"

These last pleasant epithets had reference to his respected progenitor.

On the same evening, after tea, Martin endeavoured to make a little
further advance with Anty, for he felt that he had been interrupted
just as she was coming round; but her nerves were again disordered, and
he soon found that if he pressed her now, he should only get a decided
negative, which he might find it very difficult to induce her to
revoke.

Anty's letter was sent off early on the Monday morning--at least, as
early as Barry now ever managed to do anything--to the attorney at
Tuam, with strong injunctions that no time was to be lost in taking
further steps, and with a request that Daly would again come out to
Dunmore. This, however, he did not at present think it expedient to do.
So he wrote to Barry, begging him to come into Tuam on the Wednesday,
to meet Moylan, whom he, Daly, would, if possible, contrive to see on
the intervening day.

"Obstinate puppy!" said Barry to himself--"if he'd had the least pluck
in life he'd have broken the will, or at least made the girl out a
lunatic. But a Connaught lawyer hasn't half the wit or courage now that
he used to have." However, he wrote a note to Daly, agreeing to his
proposal, and promising to be in Tuam at two o'clock on the Wednesday.