There was so much to be done and I had to do it all; Lord and Lady St. Leger could only be silent together, gazing into each other’s eyes, praising God humbly for their son given back from the dead.  I left them in the sunshine on the terrace creeping up and down, and as I looked back before I entered the house by the French windows of the morning-room, I recognized all at once that my grandmother had put off her black, and was wearing grey, with some of her old lace trimming it.  It was a tabinet which I must have seen in my childhood.  The memory of it was so remote that I felt as if I must have read about it; but I had an exact memory of the way it was made, which was billowing about the feet, and with a very straight bodice.  While I looked at them she picked a rose from the wall and fastened it into her husband’s coat.

I was busy till lunch-time, putting up packets and addressing them.  When at last I went downstairs I found Uncle Luke and my godmother in the drawing-room.  The years seemed to have slipped away from her.  Her dear brown face was as shy and rapturous as the face of any young girl in love who knows she is beloved.  They were standing by the fire when I went in.

My godmother had one foot on the fender and her hand supported her cheek.  As I went up to her, I saw in the mirror that she was wearing a very beautiful ring of sapphires which I had noticed on Uncle Luke’s hand.

She kissed me almost timidly, with her eyes down.

“She has taken me back again, Bawn,” said Uncle Luke.

“He would not listen to me when I said I was too old,” said my dear godmother.

In the dining-room Neil Doherty was bustling about with an air of great importance.  Lord and Lady St. Leger had not yet come in.

“Sure, it never rains but it pours,” Neil said, lifting a bottle of wine from the hearth where he had put it to take the chill off.  “There’s a great stir in the country.  ’Tisn’t enough to have Master Luke walking in to us safe and sound last night, but Garret Dawson’s been found dead in his study.  They didn’t dare disturb him when he was busy.  At last when Mrs. Dawson herself sent he was dead.  A good riddance to bad rubbish, say I.”

It was no use rebuking Neil for his want of charity to the dead.  I knew there were worse things being said of Garret Dawson by every peasant.  We were silent, awed, by this sudden and awful happening.  I thought of poor comfortable Mrs. Dawson, and felt that, tyrant as he had been to her, she would grieve for him as though he had been a pattern of all the virtues.  Yet she had her son.  A thought came to me that Garret Dawson had not had time to disinherit his son after all.

“Poor Master Richard!” Neil went on, averting his eyes on me. “’Tis all over the country that last night Tom Jordan of Clonmany escaped from his bed in the small-pox hospital.  About three o’clock this morning Master Richard Dawson brought him back in that quare carriage of his that brought you home last night, Miss Bawn.  Tom’s mortal bad this mornin’.  ’Tis pretty sure Master Richard’ll get the disease for he lifted Tom in his arms.  I wonder what for at all was he driving round the country that hour of the night?”