“Are there plumes on the coach, Maureen?” I asked.

“I’m surprised at you, Miss Bawn.”  Maureen looked startled and angry.  “Why should there be plumes on the wedding-coach that’ll bring yourself and the fine husband home?  I won’t be asking who he’ll be.  And by-and-by there’ll be babies in the nurseries again, and old Maureen’ll be as young as ever she was.”

The afternoon of that day I was called down to Richard Dawson, and when I went to the drawing-room I found him alone.

He took me in his arms and kissed me, and when I shivered under his kiss it only seemed to make him more ardent.  It was a terrible thing to accept his kisses feeling that cold repulsion; and my whole heart and soul another man’s.  If he had been less ardent it might have been more tolerable.  As it was I let him have his will of kissing me till he suddenly put me away from him.

“You do not return my kisses,” he said.  “Are you afraid of me, Bawn?”

“I am not used to lovers,” I said, turning away my head.

“Ah, I frightened you that day in the wood, my bird,” he said, “and I suffer for it now.  What a brute I was!  But you can make me different if you will, Bawn.  If you will but love me, my beauty, you can do what you will with me—­make a decent fellow of me.  I am not such a bad fellow at heart.  Come, give me a kiss of your own free will.  You would not when I asked you before, but you will now because I am your affianced husband.  Come, kiss me, Bawn.”

I kissed him, shrinking all the time, and with a dreary wonder as to whether it was always going to be like this, and if so, how I was to endure it.

“Your kiss is as cold as a frog,” he said.  “But never mind, I wouldn’t give a fig for a woman who was too easily won.  The time will come when you will beg me for kisses.  Till then, why, I shall do the love-making myself.”

But presently, seeing I could not endure it, he let me go.  It never seemed to occur to him that my aversion could be for him.  He took my shrinking as maiden modesty, and vowed that he delighted in it, that I should have been far less desirable if I had not been so coy, and that he would be happier breaking down my barriers than if there had been none to break.

Finally he took a little case from his pocket, and out of it he produced a ring, the beauty of which would have delighted any happy girl.  It was set with an emerald of great size and beauty, of a heart-shape, surrounded by diamonds, and at the top a true-lovers’ knot in diamonds.  He put it on my finger, saying that he had carried it about with him for a month or more, and that he had paid a pretty price for it.  It was an antique ring and the workmanship very beautiful, not like those made nowadays.

It occurred to me that he had been very sure of me.  But I said nothing while he put on the ring.

“And how soon will you marry me, Bawn?” he asked.  “There is nothing I will not give you when we are married.  I am going to take you away and show you the beautiful world.  There will be nothing you can desire that will not be yours.  Oh, you shall see what a lover I will make!  Bawn, Bawn, you will adore me.”