, for, as soon as possible after he had heard of the engagement, he
wrote a most affectionate letter to me. I could read in its effusiveness
that he was so relieved to know of my marriage that he was not disposed
to be critical over my bridegroom. He sent me a present of a rug of
leopard skins and some fine pieces of wrought silver work, and in a
postscript he mentioned that there was some one he wanted us to welcome
presently, a Miss Travers, a beauty--young, good, gifted, an heiress.

"She would be the same to me," he added in his round, schoolboy
handwriting, "if she hadn't a penny; but I am glad for the sake of
Aghadoe that she has money. Dear Bawn, I adore her."

I had guessed it all the time, and remembered that he had mentioned Miss
Travers before, and that the manner of it was significant. Dear
Theobald, it was easy enough to see through his simple guile!

My grandparents, having ascertained that Miss Travers was a quite
unexceptional person, had an access of cheerfulness. I could see that
once I was married and the paper in their hands, whatever it was, they
would begin to look forward to Theobald's return and his marriage. There
would be great days at Aghadoe yet; but I should not be there to see
them.

When I came to be measured for my wedding-dress my grandmother
discovered how thin I had become.

"You will be all right," she said, "when Richard carries you away from
this sad and troubled country to the south and to the sun."

Long before this my lover had taken the alarm and fretted over me with
anxious tenderness, saying that they had not known how to take care of
me, and that once I was his I should be taken care of as no other woman
ever was before.

Fortunately for him he was much at the Cottage in those days,
superintending the last arrangements, else I think, ardent as he was, he
could hardly have borne with me, for I was alternately listless and
bitter, so that I have seen my dear old grandmother look at me in sad
wonder; and that always reduced me to repentance.

As the time of my marriage came nearer I felt the ignominy the more. I
used to think that the very portraits on the walls looked at me askance
because I was going to marry the usurer's son. I was sure the old
servants were not the same, any more than the old friends; but, oddly
enough, Maureen had forgiven me, had held me to her breast and cried
over me. I felt that she knew the marriage would kill me, she only of
them all. Every n