Very slowly the days pass at Donaghmore; a detachment of the
constabulary keeps strict guard over the old house, the master of which
lies sick unto death.
It seems as if the old man's life is fading with the year. The shot
that entered his arm shattered the bone immediately below the elbow,
and, the wound not healing, this, together with the shock and
excitement of that night's work, is telling on him.
Honor goes about like a ghost; she looks pitifully changed; but there
is only faithful old Aileen to be troubled by her looks. Launce has
gone back to Dublin and Horace has joined his regiment at Aldershot.
One care has been lifted off the girl's heart; Power Magill is no
longer a prisoner.
The first thing that Honor heard on her return from Scanlan's cottage
was that Power Magill and two others had got away, having given their
guards the slip on the mountain road between Glen Doyle and Drum.
The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has
been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people;
and, if he was Kate Dundas's lover, as Launce in his jealous rage
declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.
But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that
is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of
attraction to the neighborhood--its pretty drawing-room is deserted.
Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are
circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public,
and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could assume for
such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friendship and very
little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her
chance of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.
November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and
anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and
sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.
Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and
complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.
One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is
in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips
dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor's voice.
Belle is not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps;
but if she has been fretting for Launce--as Honor thinks--she has
certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.
She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.
"I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never
hear anything at Donaghmore."
"The news!" Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first
thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.
"Oh, it's nothing very wonderful--perhaps nothing that you will call
news after all!" Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and
understanding it. "It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its
mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she
has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in
Devonshire. Maybe she has gone back to him."
"Maybe she has," Honor assents coldly.
"And they are saying too," Belle goes on more gravely, and looking
anxiously at her friend, "that the two men who were with Power Magill
have got off to America. I'm sure I hope it is true!"
Honor says not a word. She is thinking of the man who is left a
homeless wanderer on his native mountains--an exile within sight of his
own walls!
"It's an awful pity about poor Power, isn't it, Honor? Sometimes I cry
my eyes red thinking of him," Belle goes on in her pretty plaintive
voice; "and I often think he must have gone with the rest to Donaghmore
to keep them in order. He couldn't have gone, you know, to--to do any
harm!"
Honor looks at her gratefully, and the words linger in her mind and
comfort her in some vague way during her long and lonely walk to
Donaghmore.
The sun has set as she enters the gates, and a mist which has crept up
from the river makes the wide empty space on her left, as she walks up
toward the house, look more like a lake than solid earth.
She has left the ruins behind her, not without a nervous shiver in
passing, when the sound of a step, falling lightly but regularly on the
strip of grass by the side of the drive, arrests her attention and sets
her heart beating rapidly.
"It is all my own foolish fancy," she says to herself, and walks faster.
The step follows faster too. She stops, and instantly that light
footfall is silent. Not a creature is to be seen. The old ruins rise
grim and bare between her and the pale evening sky, but not a sound
comes from them.
"It must have been my own fancy," she tells herself, and, reassured,
starts forward almost at a run.
But listen! Again the step sounds behind her; more distant and far less
rapid than her own, but clear and unmistakable. Her heart gives a great
throb, the color dies out of her cheeks, and by the time she reaches
her own door she feels ready to fall from haste and fear.
The old butler is crossing the hall and he looks at her curiously.
"Have you seen anything to startle you, Miss Honor?" he says at last.
"No; I have seen nothing. Why do you ask?" Not for worlds would she own
to any one the ghostly fears that shook her out there in the dusky
avenue, with the sound of those following steps in her ears.
"Well," adds the butler, "one of the girls has just come in, miss, in a
state of great fright, and says that she saw the old abbot himself at
the corner of the avenue, watching the house for all the world as if it
held some treasure of his own."
"Nonsense!" Honor says, turning suddenly pale, even in the lighted
hall. "I hope these silly tales are not going to begin again. Your
master will be very displeased if they come to his ears."
As she enters the sitting-room she sees that her father is not alone.
A tall man is standing on the rug before the fire, talking with much
animation. It is Brian Beresford.
"I have taken the liberty of invading you without even an invitation,"
he says, coming forward with outstretched hand.
"And you are welcome," the girl answers softly. "Besides, your last
invasion was so well timed, we may well forgive this one."
"Ah," he says, smiling gravely, "that was a rough sort of invasion! I
hope I shall never have to attack Donaghmore in that fashion again."
"I hope not indeed!" Honor agrees promptly. "I don't think I could live
through another night like that."
"Oh, yes, you could--through a dozen such, if necessary. I quite
admired your bravery. I never saw a young lady so cool under fire
before."
She blushes as she listens; her heart thrills with a half-reluctant
pride at his praise.
"What has come to me," she says to herself crossly, "that I can't look
at the man without blushing? It's time I had more sense."
"I have come to stay a day or two," he tells them.
A week passes, however, and he does not go away. To Honor it is a week
of very mixed sensations. She has never before known any one like this
stolid Englishman, who under all his composure hides a passion so
fiery, a will so strong.
On his part he is very grave and gentle. Not once does a word of love
pass his lips; and she is glad of it, for she is in no mood to think of
love or lovers.
"It would be horrible to think of such things," she tells herself,
"while poor Power Magill is wandering in homeless misery."
She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight,
lying chill and white on the grass and the bare flower-beds.
"Where is he now?" she asks herself with a shivering sigh, as she
listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question
she is asking continually; but who can answer it?
He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some
dark gorge in the mountains.
From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one
is coming slowly toward the house--a girl, little more than a child,
with an old cloak flung over her head--country fashion. Honor watches
her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to
pass the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.
The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still
standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a
letter--not a bulky letter, a mere scrap, closely twisted; and, without
a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.
"Who has sent it, Nora?"--for she recognizes the child now that she
sees her face.
But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, passing over the
moonlit grass like the mere shadow of a girl.
The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their
chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for
their guest.
There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in
secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but
her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:
"Will you venture to the old ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who
needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M."
As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the
sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.
"How he must have suffered," she says to herself, "to have changed like
this!" Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted!
There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender
woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.
As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the
drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her
father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open
window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale scrap of paper.
His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.