beauty. Marriage, always so remote from her life, came near, and tried
to prove the lightness of its yoke with Arthur as the mate. The passion
of her father's life awoke. Dear Erin cried out to her for the help
which such a union would bring.

Her fixed resolve to depart for her convent in September kept the
process from tangle. Sweet indeed was the thought of how nobly he loved
her. She was free. God alone was the arbiter. None would hinder her
going, if her heart did not bid her stay for his sake. Her father had
needed her. She would never have forgiven herself had she left him to
carry his sorrow alone. Perhaps this poor soul needed her more. With
delight one moment and shame the next, she saw herself drifting towards
him. Nevertheless she did not waver, nor change the date of her
departure.

Arthur continued to adore at her shrine as he had done for years, and
she studied him with the one thought: how will he bear new sorrow? No
man bore the mark of sorrow more terribly when he let himself go, and at
times his mask fell off in spite of resolve. As a lover Honora, with all
her distaste for marriage, found him more lovable than ever, and had to
admit that companionship with her hero would not be irritating. The
conspiracy in his favor flourished within and without the citadel.
Knowing that he adored her, she liked the adoration. To any goddess the
smell of the incense is sweet, the sight of the flowers, the humid eyes,
the leaping heart delightful. Yet she put it one side when the day over,
and she knelt in her room for prayer. Like a dream the meanings of the
day faded, and the vision of her convent cell, its long desired peace
and rest, returned with fresher coloring. The men and women of her
little world, the passions and interests of the daylight, so faded, that
they seemed to belong to another age.

While this comedy went on the farmhouse and its happy life were keenly
and bitterly watched by the wretched wife of Curran. It was her luck,
like Sonia's, to spoil her own feast in defiling her enemy's banquet.
Having been routed at all points and all but sent to Jezebel's fate by
Arthur Dillon, she had stolen into this paradise to do what mischief she
could. Thus it happened, at the moment most favorable for Arthur's
hopes, when Honora inclined towards him out of sisterly love and pity,
that the two women met in a favorite haunt of Honora's, in the woods
near the lake shore.

To reach it one took a wild path th