"I did go home, but could not stay long; I had business in Ireland that could not be neglected."
"Business?" she repeats wonderingly.
"Yes," he says gravely--"important business; it may keep me here for some time yet."
She listens in surprise, but she is too proud to ask him what his business may be. Perhaps he would not tell her if she did; but he is nothing to her--less than nothing. Why should she trouble about his affairs?
"What have you been doing to yourself, Honor?" They have come to the narrow wire fence that separates the rectory lawn from the rectory paddock. "You are as pale as a ghost. Have you been fretting?"
For an instant she looks at him coldly, almost angrily; then the tears come into her eyes. Something in his voice, in the way he is looking down at her, in the touch of his hand, as he lays it over hers for an instant, has gone straight to her heart.
"I am not very happy certainly; it is an anxious time for us all just now."
"Yes," he says, pretending not to see her tears, "and it is lonely at Donaghmore; but you are not so unprotected as you appear to be. There are those on the watch who would gladly die to shield you from danger."
"I used to think so," she answers sadly, "but I am not so sure of it now."
"But you may be sure of it, Honor--I will answer for that myself."
She smiles as she listens to him. What should this Englishman know of the feelings of the people? He means to be kind of course; but his words carry no comfort--how should they? Looking at him as he stands before her, she cannot but own that, if his face is proud and a trifle cold in its repose, there is something true and winsome in it. The keen eyes meet hers unflinchingly, the firm lips under the heavy moustache have not a harsh curve about them; it is a face with power in it, and some tenderness and pa.s.sion too, under all its chill composure.
"He has the look of a man one might trust through everything," she says to herself almost with a sigh; and then she turns to go back to her friends, angry that he should have won so much thought from her.
"Don"t go yet, Honor; it"s cooler here than among all those chattering women; and if you want any tea, I can bring you some."
The sunshine is beating fiercely down upon the groups scattered over the center of the lawn; but here under the trees the gra.s.s is flecked with cool shadows, and the two catch the breeze--such as it is--that comes from the river.
"I don"t care for any tea, thanks; but I do enjoy this shade," she says almost reluctantly; and still indifferent to a degree that might be called rude, she lets him find a seat on the low bough of one of the ash-trees, well out of reach of the sunshine.
He does not offer to sit down beside her, though there is plenty of room.
With his shoulder against a tree and his hat well pulled over his eyes he stands and talks in his easy, half-grave, half-mocking way, that, in spite of herself, the girl finds charming.
He does not appear to be in the least anxious to interest or amuse her; yet he does both. Before long she is laughing as she has not laughed for weeks--a pretty color has come into her cheeks, her eyes are sparkling. No wonder the man looking at her feels his heart thrill!
If ever he thought that he could go away and leave this willful Irish girl, whose very willfulness has caught and chained him, he knows now that the thought was a vain one.
She is the one woman in the world for him, her love the one thing needful to crown his life. Other women may be fairer, other women may be ready to give him love where this girl gives him but a mocking tolerance; but no other woman can ever be to him what she is.
Of love and lovers there is no thought in Honor"s head this sunny afternoon. She thinks her cousin has improved, that he has even grown quite tolerable, and there it ends, so far as she is concerned.
On their way back to the house they pa.s.s Launce and Mrs. Dundas walking very close together, and talking seriously.
Honor looks at her coldly. She does not like the woman. Her bold eyes, her lithe figure, in its French-cut gown, the very grace and _chic_ that have made Kate Dundas the belle of the county jar upon Honor.
"I am very sorry Launce has gone so far in that quarter," her companion says, when they are well out of ear-shot. "These fascinating women are always more or less dangerous."
"Oh, Launce can take care of himself!"
"I doubt it," Brian answered dryly.
"Oh, but he can!" Honor persists, with a laugh. "We all can, for that matter; indeed, and it"s my opinion there is not a susceptible heart in the whole family."
"Probably not. I don"t believe in susceptible hearts myself."
A faint smile stirs her lips as she listens. It was not true, then, that pa.s.sionate declaration that has rung in her ears since she first heard it:
"Heavens, child, how I love you!"
"How would it have been with me now if I had believed him?" she asks herself. She can quite believe that the loss of this man"s love--after once believing in it--might prove a source of very keen regret to any girl; but fortunately she had never believed in it; and now it could never be anything--true or false, faithful or unfaithful--since she has given her plighted word to Power Magill.
"I wish Launce would go back to Dublin," Brian says after a pause. "He is only getting himself and other people into mischief down here. Can"t the _pater_ see that?"
"My father can see no fault in Launce--neither can I, for that matter.
I really don"t see what harm the poor fellow is doing."
"He is doing harm, Honor--take my word for it! He would be best away."
"We do not think so," she says coldly; and there the matter ends.
It is getting dark as the little party--Honor, her two brothers, and young Jack Delorme--turn in at the gates of Donaghmore. They have been talking and laughing merrily; Honor is in good spirits to-night, or pretends to be; but as they pa.s.s inside the gate a silence falls upon them.
Launce is walking on the gra.s.s, well under the trees, Jack Delorme in the very middle of the gravel path, swinging a light stick, while Honor and Horace are a little in advance. As they reach the ruins Jack stops.
"I wonder if the old abbot is above ground to-night, Launce," he says.
"It would be only polite of us to pay him a visit if he is."
As the mocking words pa.s.s his lips, Honor turns to gaze at the gray pile, which looks very rugged in the dusk. She stops instantly.
Is she dreaming, she asks herself with a gasp of surprise, or is that a shape moving slowly between her and the doorless s.p.a.ce that leads into the old quadrangle?
Horace sees it at the same instant; and the solo he is whistling--"My Queen"--with variations more or less ear-piercing, not to say distracting, dies away on his lips. He is little better than a lad, and his scorn of the supernatural is not by any means real.
"Oh, Honor," he exclaims, drawing close to her, "what can it be? Don"t you see something over there?"
"It is a shadow of some branch, dear; it can be nothing else! Wait and see if the others notice it."
"Honor, I dare not stay!" the boy says nervously. "It is cowardly of me, I know, but there is a terror on me, and I--oh, what is that?"
A sudden shriek--so long, so shrill, so blood-chilling that the hearers stand aghast--breaks out upon the still air. A second later it is followed by an imprecation and a rapid rush of feet, as Launce and Jack Delorme spring, with one impulse, toward the ruins.
Honor neither stirs nor cries out. She holds her brother"s hand tightly in both her own, and prays in an incoherent fashion; and all the time a strange unreal feeling is creeping over her.
"Can these things be?" she is asking herself. "Are spirits allowed to come back and torture the living?"--for this fear is the keenest torture her vigorous young life has ever known.
It is all over in a few minutes, though it seems to her that they have been standing there a long time, and then her brother and Jack Delorme come up to them.
"By George, we nearly had the fellow!" Launce says panting. "Never saw a nearer shave than he had in my life! I could have sworn he was within reach of my fist; yet when I struck out, the brute was gone!"