will not come back yet awhile. She has,
by her own wish and desire, gone to school, to a convent. She had
schooling enough for me, God knows, in her tender and faithful heart;
but she is as obstinate as any creature ever was when she thinks a thing
is right. So I have to wait, very much against my will, while the nuns
make a lady of Nora. It is her own phrase. I have assured her that she
is a better lady than most ladies I have known, and that I am not a
gentleman. But she would banish me and try my patience."

"Meaning----?"

"Meaning--that she will marry me when she has acquired the thing she
desires. Meaning--I would have married her, Bawn, without love, because
they blackened her, the innocent soul, for her mercy to me. But I have
learned to love her. She holds my heart against all women. I am not
hideous to her."

"And your mother?"

"Is enchanted. We are going to sell Damerstown and live in England. It
will give us all a better chance. Good-bye, Miss Bawn, for we shall not
meet again."

It made a nine days' wonder when the people heard that Richard Dawson
had married Nora Brady; but that was a year later, and Damerstown was
shut up and to be let.

Lord and Lady St. Leger still rule at the Abbey, and seem likely to rule
for many years, to the joy of their children.

Theobald's wife is keen about her husband's profession, and will not let
him leave the army yet, so that we see them only at intervals.

But the old couple are not lonely. My godmother and Uncle Luke have
their full measure of happiness. They have, what my dear godmother
confessed to me she had not dared to hope for--a child, a boy--brave and
beautiful, worthy to succeed his father in time as the Lord St. Leger.
There is no bonnier boy in all the countryside except my own, and he is
the image of his father, so it is not likely that any child could be
just like him. But the young heir fills Aghadoe Abbey with joy and
peace. My grandmother told me the other day that the ghosts have not
been heard since the child came to banish them.

===================

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation normalized.

Page 225, "that" changed to "than" (rather than endure)

===================

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