Part 11 (2/2)
She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight, lying chill and white on the gra.s.s and the bare flower-beds.
”Where is he now?” she asks herself with a s.h.i.+vering sigh, as she listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question she is asking continually; but who can answer it?
He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some dark gorge in the mountains.
From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one is coming slowly toward the house--a girl, little more than a child, with an old cloak flung over her head--country fas.h.i.+on. Honor watches her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to pa.s.s the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.
The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a letter--not a bulky letter, a mere sc.r.a.p, closely twisted; and, without a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.
”Who has sent it, Nora?”--for she recognizes the child now that she sees her face.
But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, pa.s.sing over the moonlit gra.s.s like the mere shadow of a girl.
The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for their guest.
There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:
”Will you venture to the old ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M.”
As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.
”How he must have suffered,” she says to herself, ”to have changed like this!” Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted!
There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.
As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale sc.r.a.p of paper.
His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.
CHAPTER IX.
Never has time pa.s.sed so slowly to Honor Blake. All the morning she goes about her work with a listless preoccupied air that could not fail to attract attention if there were any one to heed the girl or her moods.
Perhaps Brian Beresford heeds them; but Honor never gives a thought to him. She would be glad if he would go away and leave her to herself; but since he makes no such offer, she puts up with him.
And now, in the late afternoon, she sits down at the piano, more to pa.s.s the time than to amuse their guest. In truth, as she plays she forgets him altogether. The music, now low and sweet, now wild and martial, soothes her and brings back some of her lost nerve.
Brian Beresford, looking and listening, frowns, and then sighs. She is an enigma to him, this stately, contradictory Irish girl, with her moods and her prejudices, and, above all, her reserve. He has met no one quite like her. The women of his world are of a totally different type--he can understand them easily; but Honor he cannot understand.
He feels his heart soften as he looks at her. He is proud, and it has jarred upon his pride terribly that a man like Power Magill should have been preferred to him.
”And the chances are, now the fellow is in disgrace, she will cling to him all the closer,” he says to himself bitterly. He does not care to own it, but in his heart he is savagely jealous of Power Magill.
Very softly is Honor playing now--a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every breath a torture to her.
”What if he should be taken to-night?” she is saying to herself. ”How do we know that that child is to be trusted? How dare he trust any one when there is such a heavy reward out for him--poor Power?”
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