To be sure, she might be inkybatin'
it"--Neil, like all our people, loves a long word--"and she'll have to
put up a month's quarentine when the last o' the sickness is over. I
hear she's been everywhere it was."

After breakfast I escaped to the summer-house in the shrubbery with my
letter. The first snow lay on the ground and was white on the dark,
shining leaves of the laurels and laurestinus, but my hands trembled and
burned as I opened the letter. Why did he write to me now when I had
become used to my misery? As the sheet rustled in my hands I felt such a
longing and a desire for him that if he called me across the world I
must go.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE WEDDING-DRESS

"My dear," the letter began, "I have your letter. Most happily my
rascal, Terence, forwarded it; most happily, and by the grace of
God, as I think, I thought to leave him the name of a halting-place
where I might pick up letters, yet I expected none. What a dullard
I was, Bawn, not to have known! I compared my years and sorrows and
my white hairs with your youth and beauty, and I thought you must
love that golden lad, your cousin. Heart's delight, it will take
all the years that are left to me to tell you my gratitude. There
will be no sacrifice, child, and I do certainly believe there is no
secret that Lord and Lady St. Leger need fear. I should come to you
on the wings of the wind if there was not a reason that I must stay
a little while, and if it were not that some one is hurrying to
Aghadoe whom I can trust to tear the web of lies to pieces. He will
come in time, and I shall not long delay to follow. And you are
mine and I am yours for ever and ever.

"Your devoted
"Anthony Cardew."

The letter at once delighted and bewildered me. For a while I gave
myself up to the delight, kissing it and crying over it like a mad
creature. Then I came back to the cold light of facts. Just four days
now to elapse before my wedding-day. What could happen in those four
days to save me? Anthony's messenger, nay, Anthony himself, could do
nothing. There was always my grandfather's face of suspense, by which I
knew he counted the hours, always my grandmother's piteous air of asking
for forgiveness. Not even Anthony Cardew could absolve me from what they
bound me to.

I trie