The Man in Possession — page 220: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAN IN POSSESSION. 215 master marry a rich widdy-woman now? Shure there’s plinty of thim about.” Kate was silent. She felt too weary in body and mind to enter upon such adiscussion. The strain of the past fortnight began to make itself felt, and she only longed to be alone. Alone with her own thoughts, her own regrets, her own memories. However, Biddy was not so easily got rid of. She had all the faithful Irish domestic’s curiosity, stim- ulated not only by sympathy and affection, but also by a long acquaintance with those ‘‘shafts and arrows of outrageous fortune” for which the O’Brien household had so long been an inviting target. Kate had therefore to tell her all about Croft and its guests, to describe Sir Wilfred and Lady Jocelyn, and to be alternately commiserated or congratulated, according as the splendour of the position, or the deficiencies of its possessor, occurred to Biddy’s mind. At last she seemed satisfied and tossed back the “tails” of her new head-dress with the additional dignity she now felt had accrued to her since the improvement in the family prospects. She was torn by the conflict of her feelings and ambition. She had great ideas of the honour due to the name of O’Brien, and not for worlds would she have betrayed to any one that their fortunes were ‘‘under a cloud.” Had she accompanied her young mistress to Croft she would have scathingly condemned its magnifi- cence as being in no way worthy to compare with those of her master’s Ancestral Halls in Ireland, though she would have been diplomatic enough to ECOMNCE OOO SS) (SO