She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she
would never again see him. No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair. Her
face had become now a white and quivering mask. She snatched a cloak
up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.
She began to shake with great silent sobs. Her face was wet now, and
she could n't see. She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.
"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"
And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain,
and all the trees in the garden murmured gently. The great ash unbent,
the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion. All
the shrubs in the garden rustled.
_Hush--hush! Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_
"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"
_Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_
The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed
to bend toward her. Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head. A
rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears
lop, its pink nose twitching.
_See--see! See--see! See--see!_ The trees were like kindly muses.
The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.
It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had
wakened--her step or some cry of hers, maybe--and were snuffling and
whining to get at her. And from the stables came the rap-rap of
Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.
"I must go in," she said.
Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into
the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there
still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their
peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its
wide lap....