almost as pale as a dead face,
against the green velvet of the chair.

"He sleeps quietly, Bawn," she said. "He has not slept well of late."

"None of us has slept well," I said.

"It has almost broken our hearts, child, to be so cruel to you. I don't
believe we have had a happy hour since it was settled. We have lain
awake till cock-crow, night after night."

I had it in my mind to ask her if she had heard the ghosts, but she had
never liked the talk about the ghosts, and, remembering that, I was
silent.

"We ought to have faced it out," she went on. "As I said to Lord St.
Leger, if the disgrace was there, there was no doing away with it, even
though only Garret Dawson knew it. Mary always said she would not
believe dishonour and deliberate misdoing on Luke's part. I ought to
have had her faith."

"It is not too late," I said. "Let Garret Dawson publish his news! We
shall see what he has to tell."

"But there is no disproving it, for Luke is dead and gone."

"On your own reasoning, dearest Gran," I said. "If we will not believe
in Uncle Luke's disgrace then there is no disgrace for us. We shall only
take it that Garret Dawson bears false witness. Who would believe Garret
Dawson against Luke L'Estrange?"

"Ah, but you have lost your lover, my poor Bawn," she said tenderly.
"You have lost Theobald, and this old house will pass away from you and
him. It is all mortgaged and there is Luke's debt."

"Let it go," I said, wincing. "But as for Theobald, never fret about
that, Gran. We were only brother and sister, too close to become
closer."

"I think the wedding has turned Maureen's head," my grandmother went on
fretfully. "I found her setting Luke's room in order. She would have it
that he was coming home from school by the hooker from Galway. She has
made his bed and put his room in order and she asked me at what hour she
should light his fire."

"She is always madder at the full moon," I said.

"To-morrow morning we will send for Mary. She will help us to bear it.
When I think of her faith I wonder that I should have had so little."

"I believe you are happier," I said wonderingly.

"I feel as though I had passed out of the hands of men into the hands of
God," she replied, caressing my hair with her disengaged hand, for I had
left my chair to sit down on the hearthrug by her.

Again I had that strange, acute sense of listening; but there was a
storm outside, and the wind cried in the chimney and rattle