Part 10 (2/2)

However, there is no choice left her now, nothing to be done but to give the man her poor little bribe and go home, leaving Power Magill to his mercy.

Little does the girl dream, as she walks sadly back to Donaghmore through the waning light, that she has formed a protecting barrier round the old home and its inmates that will outlast the storms of years.

CHAPTER VIII.

Very slowly the days pa.s.s at Donaghmore; a detachment of the constabulary keeps strict guard over the old house, the master of which lies sick unto death.

It seems as if the old man's life is fading with the year. The shot that entered his arm shattered the bone immediately below the elbow, and, the wound not healing, this, together with the shock and excitement of that night's work, is telling on him.

Honor goes about like a ghost; she looks pitifully changed; but there is only faithful old Aileen to be troubled by her looks. Launce has gone back to Dublin and Horace has joined his regiment at Aldershot.

One care has been lifted off the girl's heart; Power Magill is no longer a prisoner.

The first thing that Honor heard on her return from Scanlan's cottage was that Power Magill and two others had got away, having given their guards the slip on the mountain road between Glen Doyle and Drum.

The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people; and, if he was Kate Dundas's lover, as Launce in his jealous rage declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.

But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of attraction to the neighborhood--its pretty drawing-room is deserted.

Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public, and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could a.s.sume for such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friends.h.i.+p and very little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her chance of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.

November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.

Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.

One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor's voice.

Belle is not quite so piquant and das.h.i.+ng as she used to be, perhaps; but if she has been fretting for Launce--as Honor thinks--she has certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.

She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.

”I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never hear anything at Donaghmore.”

”The news!” Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.

”Oh, it's nothing very wonderful--perhaps nothing that you will call news after all!” Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and understanding it. ”It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in Devons.h.i.+re. Maybe she has gone back to him.”

”Maybe she has,” Honor a.s.sents coldly.

”And they are saying too,” Belle goes on more gravely, and looking anxiously at her friend, ”that the two men who were with Power Magill have got off to America. I'm sure I hope it is true!”

Honor says not a word. She is thinking of the man who is left a homeless wanderer on his native mountains--an exile within sight of his own walls!

”It's an awful pity about poor Power, isn't it, Honor? Sometimes I cry my eyes red thinking of him,” Belle goes on in her pretty plaintive voice; ”and I often think he must have gone with the rest to Donaghmore to keep them in order. He couldn't have gone, you know, to--to do any harm!”

Honor looks at her gratefully, and the words linger in her mind and comfort her in some vague way during her long and lonely walk to Donaghmore.

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