Mrs. Mangan listened obediently and promised attention.  Although in matters to which she attached slight importance, such as the proportions of a prescription, her memory was liable to betray her, in other affairs, it had the cast-iron accuracy of the peasant, and without having been privileged with the Doctor’s full confidence, she was probably deeper in it than he was aware.

While still these intentions with regard to young Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger were whirling in the air above him, as a lasso swirls and circles before it secures its victim, that young man was, it is no exaggeration to say, staggering home under the weight of his happiness.  After the sacrament at the Tober an Sidhe he and Christian had gone from the hill, hand in hand, like two children.  In silence they had gone through the dark wood, and almost in silence had made their mutual farewells in the fragrant shadow of the pines.

When the soul is tuned to its highest it cannot find an interpreter.  The lips can utter only broken sounds, pathetically inadequate to express emotions that may, in some future sphere, make themselves known in terms other than are permitted to us.  There is an inner radiance that is beyond thought, that might conceivably utter itself in music or in colour, but that can no more be translated into words than can the radiance of the mid-day sun be more than indicated by earthly painters with earthly pigments.

So it was with Larry and Christian.  It chances now and then on this old, and prosaic, and often tearful earth that some kindly spirit leaves the door of Paradise a little open, and two happy people—­though sometimes it is only one—­are caught inside for a time, and come out, as Larry did, bewildered, dazzled, wandering back to earth, he scarcely knew how, saying, drunkenly, to himself: 

“Good Lord!  She is so bright to-night!” as the blackbird said, who was “blowing his bugle to one far bright star.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

Old, prosaic, and often tearful, though this earth may be, few are anxious to hasten their departure from it, and Daniel Prendergast, Esq., M.P., abetted by the ministrations of that able consultant, Dr. Mangan, “hung on,” as his friends put it, with unexpected tenacity to his share of the world.  And, so far reaching are the etheric cords that are said to bind us all together, Mr. Prendergast’s grip of his sorry and suffering life bestowed upon Larry and Christian three days to be spent within the confines of Paradise.

This may seem an over-statement when it is recorded that their next meeting was at 7 a.m. at a cubbing meet of the hounds, which occurred on the morning following on Larry’s discovery that the entree to Paradise had been his for the asking; it is, however, no more than the truth.  Christian had exacted a promise from him that no word was to be said to any other of the high contracting parties until Monday, and, as they rode in at the Castle Ire gates, the matter was still under debate.