Indeed, I wanted new friends, for the old were angry with me or held aloof from me.

When my engagement was announced my godmother had come in hot haste from her cousin’s dying bed, which now she hardly left, to remonstrate with my grandfather and grandmother.  She had urged and pleaded with them, had done all she could, seeing that she was, as she said to me, desperately sorry for them, and had finally left them in a coldness.

“You poor child!” she said to me when I met her in the avenue, she driving her fast mare in the smart dog-cart which was her favourite equipage, I on foot.  She jumped down and held the reins over her arm while she talked.  “What a face for a bride!  Why, Bawn, you are older by ten years than the child I used to know.  They are mad, mad, poor dear souls, to let Garret Dawson frighten them; and I am helpless, because they will tell me nothing.  Couldn’t you stand out, Bawn?”

I shook my head.

“If only Theobald were here!” she said, in a helpless passion.  “If only Theobald were here!  To think that they should rob him of his sweetheart because they are caught in Dawson’s spider’s web.  Their own grandchild!  It seems unnatural.  And you two lovers from your cradles!”

I don’t know what impelled me to tell her the truth, but the words came to my lips and I spoke them.

“I never loved Theobald and he never loved me,” I said.  “They have not that at their doors.  I should not have married Theobald.”

“Why, God bless me, child!” she said, staring at me.  “You will be telling me next that you are in love with Richard Dawson.  But I shall not believe it, not with that face.”

She went away with a look of hopeless bewilderment.

I fared less well with Maureen, who was bitterly angry with me and said things to me that I could not have borne if she had been always responsible for what she said.

“A fine husband you’ll be getting, Miss Bawn,” she said.  “There’s no accounting for ladies’ tastes, and by all accounts there are a good many ladies who are fond of Master Richard.  Ask Lady Ardaragh.  There isn’t much she wouldn’t give him, they say.  If half the stories are true, there are many that have a better right to him than you, Miss Bawn.  And to think you’ve thrown over my darling boy for Garret Dawson’s son!”

I must have looked frightened, for she became suddenly contrite, and, throwing her arms about me, rated herself for the things she had said, saying that she knew I wasn’t to blame, and that it was only her love for me and Theobald which made her so bitter.

Then her mood changed; and snatching up my hand with Richard Dawson’s ring on it she burst into a harsh laugh.

“What was over him at all,” she said, “to give you the like o’ that?  Didn’t he know the green was unlucky?  Sure, ’tis unlucky for him it’ll be, and you’ll never marry him.  My dream’ll come true, and you’ll be saved in time, Miss Bawn.  The ill luck is for him, not for you.”