“It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she’s done with it,” said the Doctor.

“I’m sure it will,” I said.  “It always was, and it always will be.”

“And how are we ourselves,” said the doctor.  “A little below par, eh?  Any sickness?  No?  Nausea?  No?  Headache and a feeling of lassitude, then?  No?”

After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking puzzled, when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark any longer, I told him there was nothing amiss with my health, but I was unhappy and had been so since the time of my marriage.

“I see,” he said.  “It’s your mind and not your body that is sick?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll speak to Father Dan,” he said.  “Good-bye!  God bless you!”

Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her softest mode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from extreme nervous exhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and anxieties of every kind.

“So if there’s anything I can do while I’m here, dearest, . . . such as looking after the house and the servants. . . .  No, no, don’t deny me; it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . .  So we’ll say that’s settled, shall we? . . .  You dear, sweet darling creature!”

I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside two days I realised that Alma had taken possession of the house, and was ordering and controlling everything.

Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to gain by it—­the housekeeper in particular—­for Alma was no skinflint and she was making my husband’s money flow like water, but it was less agreeable to my maid, who said: 

“This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interest in anything, and the guest walks over everybody.  She’ll walk over the mistress herself before long—­mark my word but she will.”

It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price came to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such a strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was that of a child, a woman or a dear old man.

I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairs and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed) as when I was a child and made cupboards of its vertical pockets, carrying the same funny little bag which he had taken to Rome and used for his surplice at funerals, and mopping his forehead and flicking his boots with a red print handkerchief, for the day was hot and the roads were dusty.

He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he would have tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from the Presbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he would not stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, “if it would not be troublesome and inconvenient.”

So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it to the guest’s room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir immediately.