Only an Irish Girl. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ to the girl, lying there amid the bending branches, with the sunshine on her averted face.

      "You are only a child, Honor, for all your twenty summers! You no more know your own heart than I do. Take care! If you send me away – me and my love – you may find that you have made a mistake!"

      But she will not answer him – she will not even look at him. For all the sign of life she gives she might be that Sleeping Beauty to whom he first likened her.

      "If ever you should feel sorry, Honor, for what you have said to-day – if ever you should care to have me back, either as a friend or lover, send for me, and I will come."

      The words are calm enough, but by some instinct she divines that the face bent close to hers is neither calm or cold. She hears him go away, as he came, through the gap in the high hedge, but she does not even open her eyes to watch him go. But, when all is still again, and she knows that he has passed away out of her life, as surely as he has passed out of the old-fashioned garden, she bursts into tears.

      "Oh, what has come to me?" she says to herself again and again, in a very maze of wonder at her own sensations. "I do not love the man. His coming or his going matters nothing to me."

      But, although she says this, not once but many times, the words bring her no comfort. They do not still for one moment the inexplicable plain that has risen in her heart. She gets up after awhile and goes back to the house, choosing the small door at the side, so that she may meet no one.

      Aileen is ironing in the large front-kitchen, smoothing out, as she calls it, one of Honor's pretty white dresses. It is a labor of love with the old woman, and every week she comes up from her little cottage to perform it.

      At sight of her young mistress standing in the doorway, bright-eyed and flushed, and strangely unlike herself, the good woman pauses.

      "An' is it yourself, alanna? Shure my eyes have been aching for the sight of your face this hour or more! But what ails ye, Miss Honor darlint? Shure my black drames – bad 'cess to me for naming them till ye – have not been troubling your mind?"

      "No, no!" the girl says, laughing. "I am not troubled about anything, only hot and thirsty, and – yes, Aileen, I may as well own it – cross."

      She laughs again, but her voice is tremulous, and she keeps her face well turned from the light.

      "I wish it was only cross that I was, darlint!" the old woman says with the peculiar solemnity of her class. "But it's sore and heavy-hearted I am, and that's the blessed truth. I've done nothing but drame since ever I saw you last, and every night it's the same thing over and over again, till my brain is almost turned wid it, and I rise up in the morning all in a cold perspoiration."

      "Dear old Aileen," the girl says tenderly, "poor Rooney's awful death has upset you? It has upset us all for that matter! And then it must be so dreadful for you alone on that great bleak bog."

      "Miss Honor, do ye mind my drame?"

      "Every word of it, Aileen."

      "Ye mind how I dramed that the boys dug the grave out on the moss, and hid it out of sight wid green branches!"

      "I do surely."

      "Well, Miss Honor, ever and always in my drame that grave is there still. I watch the boys dig it deep in the black earth, and cover the gaping mouth of it; and me shaking and trembling all the time. But these past three nights – the saints be above us! – there's been another grave, alanna."

      "Another grave!" The girl laughs. "Why, that is getting too dreadful!" She plucks a spray of roses from the open window behind her, as she sits on the great oak dresser, and shreds the delicate red petals all over the lap of her gown.

      "Listen to me, Miss Honor, and cease your funning! This is no time to laugh and jest at a warning that comes from the saints themselves! That the masther is in danger of his life I know as well as if I saw the very bullet that was to shoot him. The grave was dug deep and broad – and deep and broad it would need to be, save us! – out there on yer own lawn, just forenent the drawing-room windies!"

      She has left her ironing-table and come close up to the girl, her face – a delicate-featured face, peasant as she is – rigid with intense feeling, her eyes shining, her upraised hand tremulous.

      "Oh, Miss Honor darlint, shure he'd follow you to the ends of the world! Take him away from this till the bad feeling has time to cool down. Things will right themselves, never fear – the old times will come round again; but, if the masther stays on at Donaghmore, he'll never live to enjoy them."

      "But if he will not go away?" says Honor, a tone of anxiety in her voice. "You know how obstinate he is; and that letter from Dublin about landlords running away from their posts has upset him dreadfully. Oh, no, Aileen, he'll never leave Donaghmore!"

      "Then the saints purtect him!" Aileen answers tremulously. "But as sure as my name is Aileen Walsh harm will come of it!"

      CHAPTER III

      "As sure as my name is Aileen Walsh harm will come of it!"

      The words haunt Honor. They ring in her ears night and day, and spoil many hour's innocent pleasure for her.

      But what harm can come? she asks herself. The country is quiet enough now to all appearance, though more than once, in the dusk, she has heard the shrill signal whistle pealing from hill to hill or dying away over the melancholy bog.

      Of Power Magill she sees but little. He is now cold and absent, and so unlike himself that it is more a pain than a pleasure to be with him.

      Brian Beresford she does not see at all. He has written to her father more than once since his abrupt departure, but she has not even seen his letters.

      The squire blames her openly for snubbing "as decent a fellow as ever stepped in shoe-leather," and Launce stings her with covert hints to the same effect. It is all very miserable, but the girl bears it bravely. She must suffer, but she need make no sign. Even Launce's keen eyes are deceived at last, and he tells Belle Delorme that they have been on the wrong scent altogether.

      "Honor never cared a button for the fellow – she never cared for any one but Power Magill, and never will, and that's the truth! So you see what a faithful family you are marrying into, my dear!"

      But Belle only shakes her pretty head.

      "She takes it a deal too easy to please me. I'd rather she would fret a bit. Sure it would only be natural! But the loss of a man like that out of a dull country house is something worth fretting about."

      "You don't know Honor," Launce answers oracularly. "She's not the girl to lose her heart in a fortnight or three weeks' time to the best man breathing."

      "I'm not saying a word about her heart, Launce; but I do say he took a mighty strong hold on her fancy."

      "You think that she loves him, then?"

      "I think she would if he'd give her the chance," the girl answers, smiling.

      "What a queer little creature you are!" her lover says, looking at her with amused yet wondering eyes. "How on earth did you find it all out? I'll vow Honor never spoke a word to you about it."

      "How do I know that the sun is shining or that there is clover in that meadow? Haven't I my senses like other people?"

      So they pass on their way, laughing and СКАЧАТЬ