The night had come on dark outside.  Looking back from the gate, I thought that the little house glowed like a ruby in the darkness.

He put me into the carriage with a careful politeness.  As he wrapped the rug about me I had a sudden sense of the finality of it and the trouble that lay before me and the others, and a pity for his disappointment as well that was so poignant as to be almost unbearable.

“Forgive me,” I whispered in the darkness.  “I would have loved you if I could.”

“Was there some one else, Bawn?” he whispered back.

“Yes, there was some one else.”  I felt he had a right to that truth.

“You ought to have told me,” he said.  “And you should not have believed that I would win you by blackmail, even though I am Garret Dawson’s son.”

“I am sorry.  Indeed I am sorry.”

I clutched at his sleeve as he was stepping out of the carriage.

“What are you going to do?” I asked again.

“Find consolation where I can.  There are some ready to offer it, Bawn.”

He closed the door, and I heard him telling the chauffeur to drive me to Aghadoe.  I put my head out to see the last of him as we drove away, and he was standing in the darkness still looking after me.

My thoughts were in a whirl of confusion.  At first I could think of nothing except that Richard Dawson himself had set me free and that his manner showed it was irrevocable.  But I could not look beyond that to my Anthony’s return, because how was I to tell the old people who looked to me for deliverance that I had failed them?  I knew something of Garret Dawson, and that he had never in all his life been known to show mercy.  His old granite face with the tight mouth and beetling eyebrows was enough.  I quailed in the darkness as a vision of his face rose before me.  I had no doubt that, as soon as he knew I was not going to marry his son, he would do his worst.  He had been known, people said, to sacrifice business advantages even to obtain revenge.

At the thought of that I stretched out my arms as though I would take the two helpless old heads to my bosom to shelter them from the storm.  How was I going to tell them?  The carriage went like the wind, and I could hear the clashing of the boughs under which we passed.  The stillness of the afternoon had been but the prelude to a storm.

Also the memory of Richard Dawson’s face remained with me like a sore.  Now that I was free of him and need dread him no more, I remembered that he had been generous and patient, and I was grieved for him.  And I was troubled about that consolation which he was on the way to seek.  But my own troubles were so imminent and pressing as almost to push that out.  How was I going to tell them—­at the last hour, too—­with my wedding-dress home, and the wedding-breakfast cooking in the big kitchens, with a stir of life we had not had in Aghadoe for many a day?