Yes, I would do that, although I shrank from the prospect of death like any other sensitive girl.  It was not likely I would refuse to go to my dear godmother in her hour of need; and I had an unacknowledged hope that she might keep me with her, perhaps, so that I would be free of my lover for a few days.

When she heard that I had come she came down to me where I was standing by the fire in the morning-room warming my hands, for the first frost of the season had come and the night was cold.

“Ah, good child,” she said, “to come so quickly!  Everything is done, Bawn, and she is at rest.  I shall miss her dreadfully.  I don’t know what I shall do with my empty hands.  I am too old to begin to love again.”

Every one knew that Miss Joan had been querulous and bitter with her, and it made me love and reverence her more than ever to hear the way she spoke.

“Sit down, Bawn,” she said, “sit down.  You are going to stay with me, kind child.  I shall have the little room off my own prepared for you; and we shall have our dinner here.  It will be more cheerful than in the dining-room.”

I could not help noticing that though her eyes showed traces of much weeping she yet wore a singularly tranquil and even radiant look, as though good news had come to her.  Indeed, the whole atmosphere of the house seemed strangely peaceful.

A servant came in to set the table, and we went upstairs to the little room within her own room where I was to sleep.  A bright fire already blazed in the grate, and Louise was busy putting out my things.  The room looked so cheerful with its chintz—­a green trellis hung with roses on a white ground—­that one could not be gloomy and fearful in it, even if I did not know that my dear godmother would leave the door between our rooms open at night and would wake if I but stirred.

Louise helped me to put on the one black gown I possessed, which, as it happened, was patterned with roses, a crepe de Chine fichu about the neck, and I asked Louise to take it off and find me something more becoming; but my godmother would have it so, saying that poor Joan would not grudge me a few roses, having herself found the roses of Paradise.

That quiet radiancy of my godmother seemed to diffuse itself over everything.  I know I felt happier than I had felt for a long time, and I tried to put all the trouble, and the thought that I was to marry Richard Dawson the week before Christmas, out of my mind.

Everything about the dinner-table was so pretty.  I could not help feeling that my godmother had told them it was to be so; and the wax candles shone on the scarlet berries and russet and orange and crimson leaves, on the delicate napery and glass and silver; and the fire leaped and sparkled in the grate.  I had a feeling that I and my godmother were shut in together from the world’s trouble, although it waited for us outside the gate.

After dinner we sat by the fire and talked in a low voice, and I could not help commenting on the new serene happiness of my godmother’s face.  I had always thought it a cheerful face before, although the face of one who had suffered; but now I wondered that I had thought it anything but sad.