We were very quiet at the Abbey.  A fortnight earlier Uncle Luke and my godmother had been married, and were now spending a quiet honeymoon at Killarney.  They were going to live at Castle Clody when they returned; and there was a great ado making preparations for them, and every day I was over there, sometimes with my grandmother, to see that things were going on as they should.

By this time, long before this indeed, my grandparents knew all about Anthony, and were reconciled to the idea of my marrying a Cardew.  Indeed, there had never been anything against my Anthony, for he was one of those whom everybody loved and admired.  But the shadowy barrier was down, and they had rejoiced that I was to marry the man who had been instrumental in bringing Luke home after all those years.  My grandmother said even that she was glad there had been no attachment of the sort between me and Theobald, since she had no liking for a marriage of first cousins.

By this time also we had Miss Travers’ portrait, and she and Theobald were engaged.  She was a very sweet-looking girl, and so much prettier than I, having delicate little features and beautiful brown eyes and red lips, that I was not surprised Theobald had forgotten his old fancy for me.

She was coming home in the summer and was to stay at Aghadoe, and Theobald was to follow her in the autumn and they were to be married.  My grandmother was rather nervous about the prospect of receiving her alone.

“For, of course, you will be on your travels, Bawn,” she said; “and although Luke and Mary will be at Castle Clody, it will not be the same thing as if they were here.  But I must love her, seeing that she will be Theobald’s wife, and, please God, the mother of the heir—­that is, after Luke and Theobald, of course.”

I was glad my godmother was not there to hear, lest it should hurt her, for she loved children and ought to have been the mother of a houseful of them.

Now that my expectation was to be fulfilled within a few days I became oddly frightened of it.  Supposing he found that he did not love me after all, that he had been misled by a fancied resemblance in me to the miniature!  Supposing, supposing ...  I put away thoughts of calamity from me with both hands.  God was too good to let anything happen to him now.

I was so fidgety and restless that I felt I worried the old couple.  I could settle to nothing.  I could not read, although I had always been a greedy reader.  I was living my own love-story too keenly to be put off with imaginary ones.  Music held me for a little while; but through it I was listening—­listening for his coming, or for the telegram that should announce the arrival of his boat at Southampton.  I used to look across at the lighted table by the fire where my grandparents played cribbage night after night, and wonder at the quiet old faces.  Would Anthony and I come to be like that?  So interested in the chance of a card, so content to sit quietly in a chimney-corner?  I could not believe it of Anthony.  He would be always like a sword, like a flame.