As for me, it was a
meal in Elysium.

CHAPTER XL

KING COPHETUA

All that is long ago, and I am Bawn Cardew, who was Bawn Devereux. We
have a boy, dark and fine, like Anthony, and a girl who resembles me. I
am still in a bewilderment as to why Anthony should have chosen me. I
believe there is no woman, gentle or simple, who comes in contact with
him, from my grandmother down to Katty McCann, the beggar-woman, who is
not in love with him. His way with women is always beautiful. I have
seen him carry a tramp's squalling child up a steep hill and hand it to
the mother at the top with the courtesy he would show to a duchess.
Elderly and plain women love him especially, because he is not aware
that they are elderly and plain. And men look up to him and admire him
just as much after their fashion.

As I write I am in my own little morning-room at Brosna, which love has
made beautiful for me. Outside I see velvet lawns and bright
flower-beds, and beyond the lawns and the ha-ha I can see in the park a
herd of deer feeding. At the moment it is quiet. Then I hear the
thud-thud of hoofs. Our boy comes riding by on a little rough mountain
pony. Terence Murphy is giving him his riding lesson. He sits in the
saddle as straight as his father, although he is little more than a
baby. He will have Anthony's straight, strenuous, clean look, like a
blade or a flame.

And there comes Anthony himself with little Bawn on his shoulder. Her
golden hair falls about his white head. There is not a grey hair in his
black moustache, nor in his fine, even, black eyebrows. They go on after
the pony. Presently they will come shouting for me. They are my world;
but I have room for affections outside.

Brosna is now what it was meant to be, a stately, beautiful, well-kept
house. We are rich: the treasure made us all rich; and that is a strange
thing enough in our country, where there is no money to spare among the
gentle-folk.

And talking of wealth reminds me of Richard Dawson.

It was the week before my marriage--that was Holy Week, and I was
married on the Easter Tuesday--when I received a letter from Mrs. Dawson
of Damerstown, asking me to come and see her. The letter accompanied a
gift so beautiful and costly that if I had liked her less I should have
been inclined to return it.

As it was, I let Anthony do without me for once. To be sure, he was
tremendously busy getting Brosna in order for me. I had Zoe brought
round, the bea