“I know you are brave,” I said, at which he looked pleased and said that it was the first kind word I had given him.

In these days he did not force his caresses upon me as much as he did at first, but used to call me his little nun, and say in his usual boastful way that he would make me in time eager for that from which I turned away now.  Every day as our marriage came nearer I dreaded it more, and felt as if I must run away to the ends of the earth rather than endure it; but when I looked at my grandfather’s face I knew there was no help for me.

The marriage was fixed for the 20th of December, and I could see that he was nearly as impatient for it as my bridegroom.  I could see that on this side of my wedding-day there lay for him the chance that the disgrace might come at any moment.  On the other side was peace and safety.

The fear of the secret the Dawsons held possessed him so much that he had no thought for me, as he had had none for Theobald while he still believed that there was some sort of engagement between Theobald and me.

I confessed I had dreaded what Theobald would think of my marriage, not knowing the reason of it.  But my anxieties on that score were set at rest, for, as soon as possible after he had heard of the engagement, he wrote a most affectionate letter to me.  I could read in its effusiveness that he was so relieved to know of my marriage that he was not disposed to be critical over my bridegroom.  He sent me a present of a rug of leopard skins and some fine pieces of wrought silver work, and in a postscript he mentioned that there was some one he wanted us to welcome presently, a Miss Travers, a beauty—­young, good, gifted, an heiress.

“She would be the same to me,” he added in his round, schoolboy handwriting, “if she hadn’t a penny; but I am glad for the sake of Aghadoe that she has money.  Dear Bawn, I adore her.”

I had guessed it all the time, and remembered that he had mentioned Miss Travers before, and that the manner of it was significant.  Dear Theobald, it was easy enough to see through his simple guile!

My grandparents, having ascertained that Miss Travers was a quite unexceptional person, had an access of cheerfulness.  I could see that once I was married and the paper in their hands, whatever it was, they would begin to look forward to Theobald’s return and his marriage.  There would be great days at Aghadoe yet; but I should not be there to see them.

When I came to be measured for my wedding-dress my grandmother discovered how thin I had become.

“You will be all right,” she said, “when Richard carries you away from this sad and troubled country to the south and to the sun.”

Long before this my lover had taken the alarm and fretted over me with anxious tenderness, saying that they had not known how to take care of me, and that once I was his I should be taken care of as no other woman ever was before.