“I never want other boys, dada,” Robin said, “when I have you.  You are better than a brother even.”

“Have you been to see Sybil?” Sir Arthur asked, recapturing the young gentleman and lifting him again to his shoulder.

To my annoyance, I felt my cheeks grow red, but his kind, serious eyes showed no knowledge of it.  I wished they were not so far away, those eyes, so absorbed with books and dead and gone people and dead languages.  I wished they were nearer home, took more obvious thought for the pretty young wife whom I had sometimes imagined to be jealous of her husband’s absorption in his studies.

“I called, but I did not see Lady Ardaragh,” I said.

“Ah, I suppose she had gone out.  Well, good-bye, Miss Devereux.  Remember me kindly to Lord and Lady St. Leger.”

A day or two later I heard my godmother mention to Lady St. Leger, when I was not supposed to be listening, that some one had seen Anthony Cardew.  He had passed a night at Brosna, and he was off somewhere to the South Seas—­on some romantic, treasure-hunting expedition which he had been asked to join.

“Will he never settle down?” my grandmother asked in a whisper.  I noticed that they always whispered when they mentioned the name of Cardew, on account of my grandfather, no doubt, for he would always have it that Irene Cardew had been the cause of the tragedy which had resulted in Jasper Tuite’s death and Uncle Luke’s exile, and he hated her and Brosna and all the Cardews on her account.

“He shows no sign of it,” my godmother answered.  “I have little cause to love the Cardews, but Anthony is a fine fellow.  It is a thousand pities that his life must be sacrificed to the memory of a woman who was always beyond his reach, even while she lived.”

Perhaps if they had talked more openly I should have been less interested in the Cardews; but the mystery which hung about Brosna and its owners for me had had the effect as I grew up of stimulating my curiosity about them.  And now that I knew I did not feel called upon to hate them.  Even if Irene Cardew had played fast and loose between Jasper Tuite and Uncle Luke there was no reason for hating her brother, who must have been but a boy at the time.  I wondered if Irene had been like her brother Anthony, had worn in her delicacy the look of a rapier, a flame, of something bright and upstanding and alive with energy.

Since I might meet Richard Dawson and had no hope of meeting Anthony Cardew, I walked much those days within our own walls, which gave me space enough for Aghadoe park-walls are four miles in length.

But most often I found myself taking the path that led to the postern gate as though the place had some pleasant, dreamy association for me.

One day I had the whim to creep again within the little glade where Anthony Cardew had come to my help.  It was now all hung about with wild roses and woodbine and was very sweet, and far overhead the trees met in a light, springing roof of green, more beautiful than any cathedral.