I paused for a moment outside the drawing-room door which stood ajar, and I could hear my lover’s deep voice within.  Margaret let down my train for me and I went in, up the long drawing-room to where my grandmother sat in her easy-chair by the fire and Richard Dawson stood on the hearthrug with his back to it.

As I came up the room I felt again the swimming of my head and things swayed about me for an instant.  Then I recovered myself.

Between the painted panels of the drawing-room at Aghadoe there are long mirrors, in the taste of the time which could imagine nothing so decorative as a mirror.  In every one of them I saw myself repeated, a slight, white figure scintillating with gems.

I had thrown back my veil and I saw the proud delight in my lover’s face.  He advanced a step or two to meet me and I heard my grandmother say—­

“What a colour you have, child, and how bright your eyes are!”

He took up my hands and lifted them to his lips.  Then he cried out, and I heard his voice as though it was at a great distance.

“She is not well, Lady St. Leger,” he said, and there was a sharp note of anxiety in his tone.  “Her hands were icy cold and now they are hot.”

At the same moment some one came into the room and to my side.  It was Maureen, and I saw that she was very angry.

“I didn’t believe it when that fool of a Katty told me,” she said.  “Whoever heard of luck comin’ to a bride who wore her wedding-dress before the day?  It only needs now for Miss Bawn to go runnin’ back for something after she leaves the house a bride.  Sure, isn’t there misfortune enough without bringin’ it on us?  Come along with me, my darlin’ lamb, and let me get it off you.  ’Tis in a fever you are this minute.”

Then suddenly I lost consciousness of everything, and would have fallen on the floor in a faint if my lover had not caught me in his arms.

The next thing I knew was that the window-panes were showing themselves as lighted squares in a grey, misty world, and I could hear that somebody was speaking and what was said, even before I was awake.

“I’ve seen it comin’ this long time,” said a bitter, querulous voice that was Maureen’s.  “She’ll go through with it, but it’ll be the death of her, my darling jewel.  If she’s married before Master Luke comes, then he’ll come too late, after all.”

“Haven’t I suffered enough, Maureen?” my grandmother asked pitifully—­“having lost my one boy, and now to see this child slipping away from me!  And there’s a change in Lord St. Leger; there is, indeed, Maureen.  Am I to lose them all, all?”

“Whisht, honey, whisht!” Maureen said, with sudden relenting in her voice.  “God’s good.  Sure, He wouldn’t be so hard on you as to take his Lordship, not at least till Master Luke comes home.”

“And that will never be,” my grandmother went on.  “I’ve given up hope, Maureen.  Luke is dead and gone, and my husband is slipping out of life, and this child is breaking her heart.”