I was so sorry for him that I felt that if he died even the happiness of my meeting with my lover would be clouded over.  I longed for news of him, but it was not very easy to obtain it, since the infection kept every one away.

But one day I was walking when I met Lady Ardaragh driving in her little phaeton.  I had not seen her for some time and I was amazed at the change in her appearance.  She looked terribly ill.  All her butterfly prettiness was gone, and there was something to make the heart ache to see such evident suffering in one who had had the round softness of a child.

She pulled up her ponies as soon as she saw me.

“Bawn, Bawn,” she said, “there is nothing but trouble in the world—­at least in my world.  Stay where you are, child; don’t come too near me.  Do you know that he is dying over there?”

She pointed with her whip in the direction of the Cottage.

“I think I am mad to-day, Bawn,” she went on:  “and if I do not speak to some one I shall surely go mad.  I wish I were a Roman Catholic and could confess to a priest.  How much wiser they are than those who deny the necessity of confession!  I have always been fond of you, Bawn.  I believe you are as true as steel.  Let me confess to you and save my reason.”

“No, no,” I said; “you are not yourself to-day.  You will be sorry afterwards.  There is Sir Arthur.”

“If you will not listen to me I shall go to him, and there will be an end to everything.  Perhaps I am mad.  It’s enough to drive any woman mad.  Richard Dawson is dying; and my little Robin is sickening.  They will not let me be with him till they know if it is the small-pox.  Isn’t it enough to drive a woman mad?”

“Tell me, you poor soul,” I said—­“tell me everything.  Afterwards it will be buried at the bottom of the sea.”

She turned to me with a sick look of gratitude.

“You don’t know how it will ease me,” she said.  “I had a thought of going to Quinn by the light railway and going into the Catholic Chapel there and finding a priest who would listen to me and absolve me.  But I was afraid I should be seen and recognized.  When they told me Robin was sickening I knew it was a judgment of God.”

“God doesn’t judge in that way,” I said.  “Perhaps it is in that way He calls you back.  I have no belief in an angry God!”

“You have not, Bawn?  I was brought up on it.  It turned me away from religion.  You think God will not take the child away from me because of my sin?”

The anguished soul in her eyes implored me.  God forgive me if it was presumptuous, but I said—­

“I am so sure of His mercy that I am sure He will not.”

“If He will spare me Robin, I will be a good woman for the future.  Arthur has been very tender to me over the child.  It was he who banished me from Robin’s room, although he is there himself.  He says that I am so precious to him that the world would fall in ruins without me.  Why didn’t he say it to me before, and not live always in a world which I could not enter?  Bawn, I have never really loved any one but my husband.”