I thought that my grandfather had, all of a sudden, begun to show his age.  He was not so far from eighty, but hitherto he had been hale and active, so that one would have credited him with many years less.  But now he seemed shaky and tremulous, as my grandmother had been last night.  His blue eyes had a film of trouble over them, as I remembered to have seen them when I was a child and there was the trouble about Uncle Luke.  I had noticed it then with a childish wonder, although I had forgotten about it till now.

After breakfast he went out to the garden with my grandmother and walked up and down with her on the terrace in the sun.

“I am going to see if they will not tell me, Bawn,” my godmother said presently, standing up.  “And I shall not rest till I have found out.  Garret Dawson will find it a very different thing to frighten me.  Your grandfather is very old, Bawn, or this would not have happened.”

She went after them, and I saw her take an arm of each and go down the garden with them, they leaning on her.

When they were out of sight I went into the library to write my letter to Theobald, taking the blotting-pad and pen and ink and paper to my favourite seat in the oriel.  There presently my godmother found me.  I was getting on but slowly with the letter, for my unhappy thoughts were grinding upon each other like the stones of a quern, trying to find a solution of something that could not be solved.

“Lord St. Leger would do everything but tell me the whole truth,” she said.  “Poor souls!  They think I ought not to be told evil of Luke, as though I were not the one to say that I did not believe it.  There is something of money in it, but there is worse than money.  What is one to do in this darkness?  They don’t see how cruel it is to me, to keep me in the dark.  I have to be patient with them because they are so old.”

Then she stooped and kissed me.

“I must go back to Castle Clody now,” she said.  “I wonder how my baby has done without me?  She does worse without me than she thinks.”

I had heard her before call her cousin her baby, and indeed it was true that Miss Joan depended on her for everything.

Then her eye fell on my letter, and she asked me if I were writing to Theobald; and when I answered her that I was she put her hand on my head and told me not to be anxious about Theobald, because she was sure he was all right and that a letter was only delayed.

“Don’t lose your beauty-sleep any more, Bawn,” she said, “for I am sure there is a letter on its way.  All this has spoilt your looks since yesterday.”

As the day went on it grew very hot.  All the windows were open, without making the room cooler; there was a sleepy sound of insects in the grass outside.  Bees droned in and out of the window.  White clouds sailed across the sky; and a soft, warm wind rustled the leaves with a sound like rain upon them.