“My grandmother will be glad to hear you are well, Bridget.  She told me to be sure to see you.  She sent you some presents.  You will find a parcel in the cab at the door.”

“Her Ladyship is always kind and good, the Lord reward her!  I think I’ll be gettin’ down to see her and the Abbey and Maureen before the winter comes.  And now, Miss Bawn, you’ll be seein’ the house?”

I felt that it would be the greatest unkindness to refuse her, so we made the journey of all the forty-two rooms, and in every one Bridget had stories to tell, and she pointed to the pictures and the bric-a-brac and the tapestries, and classified the furniture, like any guide-book.

I was not as excited about them as otherwise I might have been.  Indeed, I could think of nothing but that Anthony Cardew was beside me, and that he had clasped me in his arms and kissed me and that there was no gentleman on earth his equal.

I knew now how foolish it was about Theobald, and how impossible it was that our brotherly and sisterly intimacy could ever have ripened into love.  Indeed, I felt years older than Theobald, and I said to myself that never in any circumstances could I have cared for a boy like him.  As we went from room to room my heart felt as though it were on wings.  To see Captain Cardew, how polite and kind he was to old Bridget, opening and closing the shutters for her and helping her up and down steps, filled me with pride and joy.  Was it possible that he could care for a little ignorant girl like me, this preux chevalier, who had been secretly a hero of romance to me as long as I remembered?

All the time as we went Bridget talked incessantly, although she became scanter and scanter of breath.  She had all sorts of reminiscences of my grandfather and grandmother and of the great days in the house; but I noticed that once when she mentioned Uncle Luke’s name she coughed to cover her mistake, and looked oddly from Captain Cardew to me as though she wondered at finding us together.

And then we were taken down to the drawing-room which opened on the right-hand side of the hall; and she would take off the covers of the old French furniture to show us the beautiful old chintzes with which they were upholstered.  Also she would have us admire the Italian mantelpieces inlaid with coloured marble, and the decoration of the walls and ceilings which were very fine indeed, and the picture by Angelica Kauffmann of the Lady St. Leger of that day as St. Cecilia playing on her organ, and the other beautiful things which the rooms contained.  All the time she sighed over the years during which the house had been closed up.

“Sure, it’s time it was all forgotten,” she said, “and that his Lordship and her Ladyship came back to where many a one would welcome them.  It was fine, Miss Bawn, when the wax lights were lit in all the chandeliers and the flashing of them was nearly as fine as the ladies’ diamonds.  There used to be the height of fashion and beauty here but never one that I’d compare to her Ladyship.  Ah, sure, they were great days!”