Martha was certainly a very clever maid. She piled Esther's hair in the most beautiful soft masses round her head, seeming to bring out the bronze shades that I think are so great a beauty in it. She did everything so quickly and expeditiously that in a very little while Esther was dressed, and looking so grand and stately a young lady as she stood in the middle of her little room that I could hardly recognize her.

"I was to tell my lady when you were ready, Miss," she said. "She wants to see you before you put on your cloak."

And then she went out, closing the door.

I clasped on Esther's neck the collar and pendant of garnets, and put the stars in her hair. They looked lovely with the pale yellow, and Esther, standing there with her head bent, I really thought must be one of the most beautiful creatures possible.

I had hardly done before Lady O'Brien came in, exclaiming at the lateness of the hour, in order, I guessed, to cover her embarrassment. But Esther ran to her and put her arms round the little old lady and kissed her without a word; and the two seemed to understand each other perfectly.

I noticed that Lady O'Brien had carried in a little packet with her, and presently, when she put back Esther, and stood a little way off to look at her, I saw that it was a jewel-case. Her eyes rested on the garnets.

"I brought you a little string of pearls, child," she said, "but you have far more beautiful jewels, and they go better with your frock."

"They are garnets," said Esther, "and Hilda's gift to me. I should like to wear them."

"Garnets!" said the old lady, peering closely. "They are no garnets. Take off the collar till I see it in the light."

I felt much abashed, for if the things were mere glass the pleasure of my gift to Esther would be gone. Lady O'Brien turned them this way and that way.

"H'mph! garnets indeed!" she cried contemptuously. "They are rubies, and exceedingly fine ones, if I know anything about it. There won't be a woman there to-night with finer jewels. I'm only afraid they're too fine for a girl."

Then Esther turned to me, and said that if the stones were indeed rubies that they must be mine and not hers; but I laughed at her, for to my mind and my love Esther is far above rubies, and I told her so.

But there was no time to continue the discussion, for just then the page-boy knocked at the door to say that the carriage was round; and Lady O'Brien took the cloak and wrapped Esther in it with great tenderness, as if she were her own child.

I noticed the pleasure and the gratitude shining in Esther's eyes, and said to myself that she would not refuse to become Lady O'Brien's adopted child.

What excitement there was at Brandon, where the twins sat demurely on chairs against the wall of the big bare drawing-room, and the boys stood on the rug pretending to feel bored, and Aline leant on the edge of Pierce's wheeled sofa, which had been brought in, all waiting for Esther's appearance! And peeping in at the door were Oona and her handmaidens.

I stood by the door, and whisked off Esther's cloak as she entered. I heard the twins' rapturous groan of delight, and the murmur of admiration from the others, and felt a share in Esther's triumph. Withal, she looked so sweet and modest, that we all felt she would never be spoilt by the world or its vain praises.

"But the frock!" said Aline, bewildered.

"Ah, my dear," said Lady O'Brien, who had a bright spot of excitement in each cheek, "that is a little liberty of mine; and nothing at all to what I shall be taking presently, nothing at all, my dear!"

"Come home early to-morrow, Essie," we cried, as the carriage drove off, "and tell us all about the ball."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE.

We expected Esther quite early in the morning to tell us how she liked the world, but the morning-hours passed, and lunch-time, and still she had not come.

However, just as little Annie was carrying in the big tea-tray—which the robust appetites of the younger Brandons demand—to Aline's room, we heard the little pony-carriage drive up, and in a minute or two we were welcoming our Cinderella home from the ball. Esther certainly looked a very different person from the radiant princess of last night. Our winter jackets have grown rather threadbare, without any great hope of new ones, and Esther's seemed to show unusually thin and skimpy in the western light which was pouring in on the tea-table and its hissing urn and pile of hot cream-cakes.

"Well," said Lady O'Brien emphatically, as she seated herself, "I have brought the belle of the ball to see you. Congratulate her, my dears!"

Esther blushed, and we all laughed, knowing Lady O'Brien's way; but the old lady was in earnest this time.

"I assure you there hasn't been such execution since I came out myself at the very same Hunt Ball, and the next morning there were no less than three challenges over the last dance I had to give. Ah! my dears, there are no such men nowadays, as I'm never tired of saying. Sir Con O'Doherty winged Counsellor Slattery, and poor Tom Kinsella went with a ball in his knee from that day. And to think I passed them all by for Peter, that sat mumchance in a corner and hadn't the spunk to approach me for a dance. All the better it was, for if he had he'd have torn my Limerick flounce in flitters, and that's something I'd never have forgiven."

She stopped to take breath, and Pierce put in:

"I hope Essie's been spilling no blood, Lady O'Brien."

"Only heart's blood, my dear boy. It's all that's ever spilt now, more's the pity."

"I suppose in your day they tapped the less important organs. You talk as if the seat of life were somewhat less important than—the nose, shall we say?"

"Hear the impudence of the boy!" cried the old lady, diverted. "I'll be after tapping your nose, my fine fellow, one of these days, if you give me any of your sauce."

"Well," said Aline, coming in, "I hope Essie had a very nice time."

"It's like your cold-bloodedness to put it that way, Aline," said the old lady; "but all I can say is that if Studderts and Ffrenches and Macnamaras come proposing for Esther, you just tell them that they'll have to wait till she sees more of the world and has had her pick and choice."

"Poor Essie! is she to become a worldling then?" said Aline, with a fond glance at Esther, who had kept silence, as was often her way, while we all chattered about her.

"You haven't taken off your jacket, dear. Aren't you hot?" she said, noticing that Esther still wore her outdoor things.

Esther looked shyly at her godmother.

"Well, Aline, my dear," said the latter, "to tell you the truth, Esther's not going to take off her jacket. She has promised, unless you and Pierce forbid it, and I don't think you will, to try what life is like with a cantankerous old woman."

"What! To live with you, Lady O'Brien?"

"Yes, my dear, to make me so happy, if it will not mean unhappiness to herself. There are so many of you here, Aline, and I am a lonely old woman with a very thirsty heart for a little girl of my own."

Aline looked at Pierce.

"Esther seems to have consented," he said, glancing at her half-fearful face. "Eh, Essie?"

"Yes, Pierce," Esther said in a low voice.

"Well, that being so, Aline, I don't think it's for us to forbid it. Esther's old enough to choose for herself."

Lady O'Brien turned round and gave him a hug which disarranged all his pillows, so that Aline had to come and shake them up again. As she did so I noticed that she touched Pierce's face lightly with her cheek. Perhaps Aline felt that he too would soon be going away from her—a longer journey than across the valley to Annagower. When she had arranged him comfortably in silence she came back to her seat behind the tea-table.

"Very well, dear friend," she said, "there is nothing for us to do but to thank you and say yes. But Esther will need some preparation."

"None—all that is my affair, Aline. If you could know how I have longed to dress a girl."

So Esther never took off her jacket at all, but sat there like a visitor paying an afternoon call, crumbling her cake into her saucer absent-mindedly.

But she was not going to leave me like that. I went over to her and put my arm round her neck.

"Come for one more talk, Essie," I whispered, "while you are still ours and not Lady O'Brien's."

For I don't think any of them felt Esther's going as I did. We had always been so closely knit together, as close as the twins, or Aline and Pierce, and though of late the tie had been loosening a little, yet I had never felt that it could fray or grow thin. She came without a word.

When we had reached our own room upstairs we sat down on my bed side by side and twined our arms about each other. So we sat in silence for several minutes. At last Esther whispered in my ear, in her low passionate voice:

"We shall never be less to each other, Hilda,—never, never. Never, till all the seas run dry."

But she was going away, and I felt that things would not be quite the same again, and so I felt I could not speak, but a few very bitter tears—for I do not cry easily—came into my eyes, smarting and burning them.

"You will be happy, Essie," I said, "and your happiness is what really matters. And you will make that dear old soul as happy as the day is long."

"Happy?" she said, answering the first part of my sentence and not the last, "I do not know about happiness, Hilda. My dear old godmother would buy me the world if she could, but happiness may be beyond her reach."

There was something in the way she said it that alarmed me, and stirred all my late misgivings about Esther.

"There is nothing, Esther?" I whispered. "You are not in trouble, dear?"

She looked at me half-startled.

"I spoke generally, Hilda. Every one has trouble."

"Oh, is that all?" said I; but my mind was not the more at rest. Still, I did not want to surprise Esther's trust. I drew myself a little away from her as I asked in a sprightlier voice:

"And the ball, Essie. Were you really so brilliant a success as her ladyship says? Tell me all about it now that we are here quietly by ourselves."

"Oh, the ball!" answered Esther, coming back as from a distant country. "Yes, it was very fine, and every one was so kind. Even Lord Cahirduff would dance with me, though he has gout in his knee, and Lady Cahirduff, who is such a handsome woman, with gray hair and bright eyes, said she couldn't make out how it was we were such strangers, that she had known our mother well, and asked if she might call. But Lady O'Brien said she was to come to Annagower one day, Tuesday, I think. Lord Cahirduff is such a dear old man, and pays such handsome compliments, and Lady O'Brien and he kept up a fire of jokes, and Lady O'Brien seemed to like him very much, for she slapped him with her fan several times, and called him an impudent fellow, just as she does Pierce."

"Of course," said I, "he was one of her early lovers, and remained single for her sake years after she married Sir Peter. But the young men, Essie?"

"I will show you my programme," said Esther, producing it, very crumpled, from her pocket. "The young men were very pleasant, and I could have danced every dance many times over. The girls, too, were very pretty and beautifully dressed, and there were many I thought I should like to know. The only one who was not nice was that horrid little Miss Pettigrew. Do you remember her, Hilda, that day long ago at Annagassan Races? Well, she spoke to me once when I sat near her, resting from a dance, and was by way of being very polite, but I couldn't respond very cordially. She didn't seem to know many ladies, I thought, though she had plenty of partners."

"I daresay," said I, carelessly; "but she's not worth talking about. I see a great many initials here. Which of your partners did you like the best?"

Esther blushed.

"They were all very pleasant, dear Hilda," she said. And then, with a little jerk of the voice, as if she did herself violence in speaking:

"Mr. De Lacy was there too, Hilda."

"Oh, was he?" said I. "I was just thinking that the frequent 'De L.' here stood for him. And how is he, Essie?"

"He did not look well, Hilda, though he said he was well. Those internal hurts take long to heal, and then it must be horrible for him at Angry, horrible."

"It is plucky of him to stay there when he might be with his dear old grandfather in Warwickshire."

"Yes, isn't it? I think it noble of him, Hilda."

"He asked for us all?"

"Yes, most affectionately. He thought of everyone. He asked me if I thought Aline would ever withdraw her denial of Brandon to him. She might, Hilda, don't you think? It would be only kindness, seeing how alone he is and young, and ill fitted for what he has to endure."

"If he were our friend, Essie, he might have harder things to bear."

"What do you mean, Hilda?"

"You cannot guess?"

Suddenly Esther turned from me and hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to heave up and down, and a heavy sob broke from her. It struck me suddenly that this was the weeping of one used to a burden. The tears flowed very fast as if they had been held back for a long time, and the sobbing went on with a quiet patience that brought a pain into my own heart.

"Poor Essie!" I said, "poor Essie!" and then I put my arms about her, and let her cry her fill.

"Oh, Hilda!" she whispered at last, "he looks so ill, and I cannot bear it. They will kill him, and I shall die too."

"When did it all begin, Esther?" I whispered back again.

"The first minute we saw each other, I think. But he went away without speaking, and yet he knew I loved him, and I knew he loved me. It is love for ever with both of us, Hilda."

"You haven't been meeting him, Esther?"

"Oh, no! you don't think I could? Not secretly, and within Brandon walls. If I met him I should tell everybody. But I'll tell you how it happened. You know your hiding-place in the abbey, of which you gave me the secret?"

"My tree? Yes."

"Well, I used to go there after he left, where I could be quiet and think. You were keeping the house at the time with a cold, so I was undisturbed. And the second day I was there I saw him riding by, looking so sad and delicate. He did not seem fit to be on horseback at all. And while I was looking down at him, he looked up and saw me. I didn't show myself, indeed, Hilda. It was as if he felt I was there, and obliged me to show my face. I was wearing one of those pale monthly roses in my frock, and he halted under the tree and looked up at me, and called out, 'Give me your rose, Esther, and I shall understand'. And I threw the rose to him. You should have seen his face as he caught it. But I wouldn't stay to speak. I swung myself down from the tree, and ran away as fast as ever I could. After that it came by degrees that I used to be there most days to see him pass by, and every day I gave him a rose, and if it happened that I could not be there at that hour, I used to go early and leave the rose in the abbey window where he could find it."

"And was the rose all? Did you never speak?"

"He used to say a word or two sometimes, but I would not wait to listen. I knew he loved me, and just then Aline was so troubled about Pierce, and I could not bear to deceive her. I would have felt the deception a stain on our love."

"And it went no further than the rose?"

"No. Was it very bad, Hilda?"

"It was superhumanly good, Esther. But I am glad you were so good. However, you talked last night?"

"He said a great many things which I had always known," she said, her cheeks all one soft fire.

"Well, Essie dear," I said consolingly,—during her recital the tears had dried themselves away on her hot cheeks,—"we must only hope for the best. Of course it's a pity you should have selected the grandson of the hereditary enemy to fall in love with, but, as a matter of Christianity, there's no reason why the feud shouldn't lie with Sir Rupert in his grave. He made it, and I don't see why it shouldn't end with him. And then it would be a pretty bit of poetical justice if his heir should marry one of the family he has impoverished."

"Marry!" cried Esther; "I had not thought about marrying!"

"I don't suppose you had," said I, "but those things generally end that way. All the same, I daresay it's as well you shouldn't think about it just yet, for I've no doubt that the fact that Sir Rupert is still alive will indefinitely postpone it."

"I should be satisfied," said Esther, with one of her enraptured looks, "just to know that he loved me, and that things were well with him. I think I should be happy so, if I were never to see him."

I kissed her for answer. Dear Esther, she was always one to give up all and never count the cost.

"Now, bathe your face and come down," I said, after a few minutes, "or Lady O'Brien will think I have kidnapped you. By the way, you will tell Aline that you met young De Lacy at the ball?"

"I suppose so," said Esther; "or will you, Hilda? I should be afraid of betraying myself."

"I daresay your godmother will save us the trouble," I suggested.

And, sure enough, when we went downstairs the first name we heard from Lady O'Brien's lips was De Lacy. Fortunately the room was full of dusk and firelight by this time, so that the mantling colour which I felt sure Esther wore was invisible.

"I'm inclined to agree with you," Pierce was saying as we went in. "If I'd been here I should hardly have backed up Aline in shutting the door against the lad. He had right on his side when he refused to be made an enemy on his grandfather's account."

"He's a throw-back, as his father was before him," said Lady O'Brien, "or how does a De Lacy come by those gentle eyes and delicate ways? It makes him less of a match for old Rupert."

"Still, he has plenty of courage," said Aline, "or he wouldn't be shut up in Angry with those two wicked old men."

"Indeed, then, 'tis no place for him," asserted Lady O'Brien. "And more betoken, he is going to have the run of my drawing-room, I can tell you."

I saw a quick look of alarm in Aline's face. If that speech had been uttered before she had consented to Esther's going, her consent would have been harder to extract. But now it was too late to withdraw, and so poor Aline, with a melancholy visage, said good-bye to the sister whom we should see constantly, but who had nevertheless gone out of our house and our home, for ever in all probability. Such partings, even in the happiest circumstances, are sad things.

That night, as I was going to bed, Aline came in and kissed me with unusual fervour.

"Ah, little Hilda," she said, "we are beginning to dwindle!" and I knew she had it in her mind of who would be the next to go.

"But it is good for Esther," I said, though my own heart was full of tears.

"Yes, Lady O'Brien has already provided for her. Sir Peter's money returns to his family, but she has a comfortable sum to live on in her own right. So that two of the children are now safe out of the clutches of poverty—Freda and Esther. We who are left ought not to repine."

If there was anything else at her heart she did not speak of it to me that night.

CHAPTER XV.

PIERCE GOES ON A JOURNEY.

That winter was a very quiet and a very sad one. As the days passed we felt the wings of death brooding closer over the house. Little by little Pierce had given up the ways of one who was to live, had given up his bath-chair which was Lady O'Brien's present, and the sofa in Aline's room, and the coming downstairs. We knew now that he would come down no more till he was carried down, and we dreaded the spring that would bring further weakness to our beloved invalid, and the summer that would take him from us.

He liked to get up about noon and lie on a sofa drawn near the fire and have us to talk to him, and as the days turned towards the spring he lay by the window where he could see the cloudiness coming on the bare boughs and Brandon turning bronze and pink in the fresh cold air.

What his room became in those days I never could tell. Whatever had befallen our Pierce out in the world, and he carried the secret with him to the grave, he had saved his soul triumphantly out of it. To see him there dying in the flush of his youth, so resigned, so gentle, so merry even, clutched at our hearts. He prayed incessantly when he was alone or quiet, and in those latter days he came to have visibly the light of God's countenance upon his face. His room was like the cell of a saint to which we went for help, and comfort, and refreshment. Once when Aline and I came out together she suddenly caught at me and began to sob silently against my shoulder, yet in the midst of her anguish she whispered to me:

"Oh, Hilda, I wouldn't keep him if I could! I can see that he is ripe for heaven. And yet, and yet, it breaks my heart to see him so glad to go."

All this put Esther's love affairs greatly out of my mind. Daily she and her godmother drove over to see how Pierce was, and to sit with him a little. When his voice had sunk almost to a whisper he still tried to keep up the old merry banter with the friend who had been so good to him and us, and I have seen the dear old woman respond bravely while the big tears stood in her eyes.

Once when she had had to go away to conceal her emotion, she said to Aline:

"'Tis not tears of sorrow, my dear, I'm giving him, 'tis only that it dazzles my sinful old eyes to have sight of one of God's saints passing. Hush, now, my dear, don't be grudging him his joy. 'Tis for you who love him to be glad for him."

"But he is so young to die," said poor Aline, "and he and I were to have been always together."

"Ah, my child," responded the old woman with a sudden intuition, "you might have lost him more cruelly! Don't you see that he's had some trouble, young as he is, that has just ended his life for him. And kinder so. He wasn't one to grow hard and wicked, nor yet was he one to live carrying a dead heart about with him the rest of his days. Indeed, indeed, God gave him the better part."

"Oh," said Aline, "you think he has had a great sorrow?"

"I am sure of it, child, but maybe it was just through that same sorrow that God gathered him."

        "Yet let him keep the rest
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
        May toss him to my breast"—

I said softly from my corner, where they had not seemed to notice me.

Lady O'Brien turned round sharply.

"That's it, Hilda, that's it. Your poetry has said it a thousand times better than I ever could."

Esther, during these visits, would sit on the floor by Pierce, and now and again would lay her cheek to his hand.

"I wish I could tell him, Hilda," she said once, "but I can't trouble him now. If all were well with us it would be another matter, but I must not bring trouble near him. And yet his touch comforts me."

Esther's fears now were mainly concerned with her lover's health. Her experience of Pierce had taught her to look for the signs and tokens of illness, and sometimes she came to me in a paroxysm of terror because she thought Harry De Lacy looked frailer than when last she had seen him, or because she had heard him cough, or noted the transparency of his hand against the light.

He was not an over-frequent visitor at Annagower, not more so than many other gentlemen, and as yet the understanding between him and Esther was not a formal one. She could not, she said, in these sad days, trouble anyone about her affairs, and it was better that he should be very patient and not come too often, nor try to force things to a conclusion.

"If I had him to nurse and feed up and take care of, everything would be well," she used to say; "but now I fear that he will stay at Angry, only to die there. I wish he would go back to Warwickshire and grow strong. I could bear absence, silence, anything, if I had not this dreadful fear."

"Except separation," I suggested.

"Only death could bring that about," said Esther solemnly. "If he were to leave me, and I were to hear nothing from him, I should know that he was dead."

The trouble that was brooding over us seemed to bind us Brandons more closely. The poor boys were always hanging about with wistful faces that spring, wanting to do something to help if they could. They used to come into Pierce's room and sit down with a great parade of not creaking or making noise, and soften their rough young voices to a hoarse whisper as they addressed him. I have seen the old humour flash into Pierce's sunken eyes as he looked at them, humour oddly blent with immense tenderness. Then out of sheer kindness he would send them off fishing or shooting, with an expressed desire for a trout or a quail, for which, when they arrived, he had no appetite.

The twins, too, proved themselves little hearts of gold. They would bring in their treasures from garden and woodland to show to Pierce—early primroses, or a group of tall daffodils, or a mass of wild hyacinths;—such things brought to him by his shy little sisters seemed to give him great pleasure. He would stroke their brown heads and tell them to be very good to Aline, and then would watch them fondly while they sat before the fire, their two heads bent over one book, till he fell asleep.

At Easter Freda came for a week. We thought she would have waited for the end, though that was not a thought we put into words for each other, but it seemed strange that she could not stay by Pierce as long as we kept his precious body on the earth.

Yet she seemed to care as much as any of us, and hardly left Pierce's room during that week.

"I suppose it is the child," Aline said to me as if she would excuse her. "We can't be expected to understand how a mother's heart drags her back to where her child is.

"Yet I should think," I said, "that she might have trusted him to Mrs. Vincent for a while, so that she might stay with Pierce while ... while—"

And here I broke off with a sob and went out of the room.

But I was present when Freda and Pierce said good-bye, at least for the beginning of their parting.

Freda had come in with her hat on, and looked very pale, I noticed, but tearless. She knelt down by Pierce, and I heard her say:

"I have to go, darling. You know, darling, that I must go, though it is breaking my heart to leave you now."

"I know, Freda," he said, "and it has been good to have had you this week. Good-bye, my dearest! When I am gone you will have two instead of one in that distant country."

I saw Freda wring her hands. Then I got up and went out of the room. I thought it best to leave them together.

So Freda went away, and though we said nothing, Aline, I am sure, felt a little chill at her heart against her that she could go. Yet, having seen the trouble in her face, I could not judge her. There must be reasons that we did not know.

But when Lady O'Brien broached the subject I did not know how to answer her.

"I don't want, my dear," she said, "to be prying and impertinent, and I can't think badly of a Brandon; yet, how is it that your sister couldn't stay to see the last of that dear saint, and to be a comfort to poor Aline when the time comes?"

"I do not know, Lady O'Brien," I answered truthfully.

"And why didn't you ask her, my dear?"

Yes; the old lady was right. Why hadn't we asked Freda to solve for us the mystery that had somehow grown up about her. It would have been the simplest thing to do, and might have saved us the wondering pain that was in our hearts when we thought of her.

"It is what we ought to have done, Lady O'Brien," I assented. "But one thing I can assure you of, Freda is not hard-hearted. If you had seen her face as I did, when she said good-bye to Pierce, you would be as sure as I am."

I have always heard that consumptives take it hard to die. Looking back now on those days, I thank God that it was not so with Pierce. He seemed to have foreseen every step of the way, and to be prepared to endure it all joyfully—the night-sweats, and the fevers, and the exhaustion, and the terrible, terrible difficulty of breathing. He never complained, and his only distress seemed to be that it caused pain to those he loved so dearly.

The month of May turned round in a glorious succession of scented days and silver nights. The end was very near now, and Aline was sitting up at nights with Pierce. It was a duty she would yield to no one, and even Oona forbore to press her, for we felt that she could not endure to be away from him a minute longer than she could help, and they were to be together so short a time.

I could not sleep those nights. The moon was so brilliant, and the scent of hawthorn and lilac so ravishing, and all night the corncrake sawed incessantly in the ripening grasses. So I often kept vigil with Aline and Pierce, though they did not know it.

I used to sit on the top step of the stairs from the great hall of Brandon, round the gallery of which many doors open. One at the stair-head opened into Pierce's room, and sitting there huddled in my dressing-gown I could hear his laboured breathing, and sometimes the soft murmur of Aline's voice as she spoke to him, or her quiet movements as she went to and fro in the room.

I sat there sometimes till well into the dawn. Over my head the great hall window held the east, and through its colours the sunrise came magnificently.

I was sitting there one night with my head in my hands, and the moonlight was casting black lozenges on to the floor. Everything was quiet in Pierce's room, save only the struggle for breath that went on incessantly. Suddenly there rang through the night outside the cry of a woman. It began thin as an Æolian harp, and swelled to a full chord of passionate lamentation. It came from without, but it seemed to ring through the old house and beat against the rafters of the high roof overhead.

I sprang to my feet terrified, and with a wild impulse to fly anywhere for human companionship, but my fear of disturbing the dying and the mourner kept me still.

Again the wild cry rang out, more piercing and heart-broken. I looked at the sick-room door, expecting Aline to appear, but all was quiet.

The third time it rang, and now it was close by me, close against the great window. I lifted my eyes in fascinated terror, and for a moment the moonlight was blotted out. Something like the wings of a great bird, or the trailing veil of a woman, passed slowly across the panes. Then I fell, huddled up, with my head against the upper step.

When I came to myself I was lying on my own bed, and Oona was bathing my head with something sharp and aromatic. The gray dawn was filling the room like a tide.

"Oh, Oona!" I cried; "what was it? Did you hear it, the dreadful thing?"

"Whisht, my lamb! I heard her. Many's the time I've heard her these sorrowful months. But she's not dreadful, my jewel. She loves every one of ye, and 'tis because her heart's breaking for the trouble in the family that she cries like that."

"They didn't hear, Oona?" I asked, with a new fear.

"Not a sound. Master Pierce was asleep when I went in, an' Miss Aline, poor lamb, was sound off, with her head against his hand. She's wore out, sure she is. I didn't disturb her. 'Sleep, my honey,' I said, for I knew she'd need all her strength for the trouble that's so close at hand. Why, when I found you in your white gown I thought 'twas you was the banshee, Miss Hilda, darling. There, never be afraid of her. Sure she loves every hair of your heads."

In the afternoon of the next day Pierce died. All through the day he had been dozing quietly, with his hand lying in Aline's, while incessantly she dried his face with a handkerchief. We were all in the room, including Esther, who had been sent for, all huddled about miserably, some of us weeping, and the boys manfully trying to keep the tears out of sight.

Now and again Oona would steal into the room, and bring one or another away for food. It was terrible waiting there for the end, with nothing to do but wait. At every least sound Pierce would start, and open his eyes, and then would sink off again into a stupor.

We were troubled about Aline, who had eaten nothing. After all it was Hugh who persuaded her. He brought some nourishing jelly to her, and when she shook her head, he was not to be put off like the rest of us.

"Pierce said last night that he gave you to me to take care of," said the poor boy huskily, and as he said it Pierce opened his eyes and smiled at him.

"You are the head of the house," he said slowly. "You will be what I failed in being."

Then he closed his eyes, and Aline allowed herself to be fed by spoonfuls with the jelly.

About three o'clock in the afternoon Pierce seemed to rally. He looked round at us all with calm seeing eyes, and seemed to know us quite well. His lethargy had passed away for the moment. He turned to Aline, and looked at her with great tenderness.

"I wish you would find out Desmond," he said, "and let him know that I loved him at the last, and that I knew he was right, and thanked him."

"I will do it, Pierce," said Aline.

"I wanted to say more," he said, "but I am too tired to think."

Then he smiled on us all round, and fell asleep smiling. We thought he would have died in that sleep, but he did not. The clock in the stable-yard had just struck five when he opened his eyes, full and wide, and gazed upwards.

"Remember me," he cried, "when Thou art come into Thy kingdom."

And then a film seemed to settle on the brightness, and the light slowly faded out.

CHAPTER XVI.

HONEY AMONG THE ROSES.

That was the loneliest summer that ever I remember. Soon after Pierce had left us, Lady O'Brien carried Aline and Esther off to Kilkee. Aline bore her sorrow bravely, with more hope and faith than we had dared to expect; but if you have been building all your thoughts and cares and wishes and anxieties about one human being for nearly all your years, and then you are bereft, the empty place is terrible. Even our Lord Himself endured desolation, and He does not spare it to His creatures though He walk with them through the shadows.

There had been some talk of my going after a time, when Aline should return. Lady O'Brien had taken her cottage till the end of September. But I begged her to keep Aline and let me stay at home,—I knew Aline's mind would be at rest while I was in charge,—and I had my wish.

But, oh, the unutterable loneliness of it! It was a beautiful summer, with long, long days of haze and heat, and evenings that trailed themselves out, I thought, unduly long. There was no excuse for firelit and lamplit evenings. By the time the moon had come out in the green sky, and the last wood-dove had gone to bed, it was time for me to follow.

I have always associated the call of the wood-quest, as we call it, with the loneliness of that summer. As the woods grew dark with their prime, and the love-songs of the blackbird were stilled, that lonely complaint of the dove seemed to brood over all the world. The children say it is the bird's lament for the smallness of her family.

"The robin and the wren have nine and ten,
And I have only two—oo—oo."

When I have been happy her note has sounded as though she were sweetly in love with her own melancholy, but now, how lonely it was, oh, how lonely!

The young ones were always out and about, full of the multitudinous occupations of country children in summer. I would not hamper them with my lagging steps or burden them with my melancholy, so that, except for Oona, I was almost always alone. And she was not cheerful. The death of her eldest nursling had shaken her sorely, and she had grown feebler and was usually full of forebodings and omens.

But for my writing I could not have endured the loneliness. I scribbled a bit in those long days, and burnt much of what I scribbled, but what I retained I laid away in the secret cupboard in Aline's room. The blessed thing about writing is that we must give it everything for the time, entire absorption. If I had had to sit and sew a seam, I think my heart would have broken. I started my novel, Love in the Valley, some time that July, and it progressed more to my satisfaction, and with less destruction of manuscript, than anything I had hitherto attempted. I love the book, because it helped me then, more than any of its successors. People find it sad, but the sadness and loneliness of youth are of the most monotonous gray. The future has no such illuminating flashes as come out of the past.

I had always been rather starved for reading. The Brandons could never have been very bookish folk, and it is not possible to find any but very dry provender in the mouldering volumes bound in calf and gold which line the library. Why, a whole side of it is taken up by Transactions of the Irish Parliament, wherein many Brandons sat; and many of the later volumes are records of learned societies and such things. The little amount of literary bread to this vast deal of sack I had devoured long ago.

Well, one evening in August, when I was finding my time more than usually heavy, Oona came to me where I sat on the terrace overlooking the rose-garden, and longing for once that I could fly out into the world where the human soul need not walk in such utter loneliness. She looked quite cheerful, and I turned to her, willing to be cheered.

"Miss Hilda dear," she said, "I've a little bit of news for you. Rose Hill is open again."

"Indeed!" said I languidly. "Who has taken it?"

"A military gentleman; General Hugh MacNeill. Oh, a rale good Irish stock, though his family has lived out of the country!"

"I'm glad the pretty old place is not to go to rack and ruin like many another."

"Oh, they're putting the finest complexion at all on it! Thousands of painters and paper men in it, I hear, and the most elegant of furniture come down from Dublin. 'Twill be a sight when 'tis all done."

"I suppose he has a family," I said, more by way of being civil to Oona than anything else, for I didn't suppose the occupation of Rose Hill would affect us any more than the occupation of twenty other houses in the country.

"Sorra one. He's an ould bachelor gentleman, or a widdy man—I don't rightly know which. But it isn't about him I'm thinking, an' he's not expected this good while yet. 'Tis a visit I'm after havin' from my cousin, Mary O'Connor. She's goin' as housekeeper. I believe 'twas Lady O'Brien gave her the good word, for the General and she's ould friends. 'Tis glad I am Mary's in place again, an' two housemaids an' a boy under her. It'll be new life to her, the poor woman, to have them to drive over-an'-hither. She was always used to rulin' sarvants, an' a fine heavy hand over them she has, Miss Hilda dear. I'd like to be there the first clay or two to hear the malavoguin' Mary'll give them with her tongue. They're English, more betoken."

Oona seemed as heartened up by Mary's news as Mary could be herself, and I was cheered insensibly enough to waken up to a certain interest in her tale.

"The grandest of chaney an' ould eccentricities out o' the Aist. Mary says there is haythen gods an' goddesses that hasn't a screed on them, and 'ud be downright ondecent, only they're brute bastes, an' silver trays as big as a cart-wheel, an' little houses—piggodys, Mary says they're named—of ivory, an' big ould elephant tusks. There's no end to the grandeur. An' Mary's duty to you, Miss Hilda, an' if you'd bring over the little ladies, an' Master Hugh and Master Donald, she thinks they'd like to see the ingenuities. An' proud she'd be if you'd take a cup of tea afterwards."

"It would be very pleasant, Oona," I said, "if you are sure there would be no danger of intrusion."

"Sure isn't Mary housekeeper, an' the master not expected this month yet? Let alone that him an' Lady O'Brien's ould cronies, an' I expect yez'll be in an' out with him, like a dog at a fair, all the time as soon as he gets settled."

"Then we shall certainly go, Oona," I said. "The twins would love it, I know, and so would the boys."

"Oh, Miss Hilda dear!" cried Oona, her voice changing to one of tragic supplication, "all I ask you is to keep them darlin' boys from the ould swoords an' pistols an' trumperies that Mary says has come down by the cart-load. Sure 'tis not in Nature if they go meddlin' with them that they won't kill aich other or thimselves. Let alone that some o' them is maybe poisoned, as Mary says, an' a scratch o' one 'ud let the life out of a rig'mint."

"They'll be sensible, Oona, an' not meddle with them."

"Indeed, then, an' if they are they won't be like any boy-flesh I ever heard tell of. 'Tis as natural for boys to kill thimselves as for the bird to fly. There! an' you can't have 'em different. The Lord made them so."

The next day the party of us went over to Rose Hill accompanied by Oona, who could not refrain from seeing the "ingenuities" as well as ourselves, though she put it on the score of seeing that the boys and the twins didn't get into mischief.

Rose Hill is built on the side of a little ravine, down which it looks to the plain and the distant sea. You ascend to it through a tiny wood, and you look down from the winding pathway upon a little brown trout-stream in the valley below. The house is fancifully built with balconies and green outside shutters, and stands but two stories, to the second of which you ascend by the hall-door steps. But it stretches away at the back to a considerable size.

The house had long been shut up, and many a time as children we had peered in at the unshuttered windows to rooms once gay with gilding and white wood panelling, with marble mantel-pieces that had coloured wreaths let in, and shutters with looking-glass in the panels. The house seemed built for lightness and brightness, and was said indeed to have been designed for a bride. But the bride died almost before the waning of the honeymoon, and the disconsolate bridegroom shut up the place, and let it go to ruin.

The little lawn in front was planted thickly with rose-trees, from which I suppose the place derived its name. Many of them had gone half-wild, and every summer these flung out the most exquisite rosy veil of blossoms, more beautiful, with the pale-green leaves, than any gardener ever fostered. For years we had gathered those roses, and waded in the grass, knee-deep, in the garden, to find the cherries and apples and pears and plums in their season, which would otherwise have gone to feed the birds.

As we came up to the door we saw the changes that were taking place. The long grass was mown and lying in swathes, and a grumpy-looking old man was shearing the rose-trees, now fortunately done blooming.

The house-door stood open, and the hall was full of painters' ladders and paint-pots and such things, while already the front of the house had been brilliantly whitened and the shutters re-painted.

Oona's cousin came bustling out to meet us, her comfortable face wreathed in smiles. She was dressed very neatly in black, but I could imagine that her frilled white cap, and the little shawl round her shoulders, might excite the derision of the English servants. However, as Oona explained, Mary was subject to the ear-ache this good many years back, and couldn't bring herself to return to the cocked-up bit of a thing which she had worn with dignity on her dark hair in her old house-keeping days.

The library was in comparative order. Like all the rooms in the house, it was light, and the bookshelves had been painted white, which I thought very gay. The floor had been covered with a cool green-and-white matting, and the green blinds were drawn down to temper the brightness of the room. It was a real summer room as I saw it first, and the effect was increased by the open French window, which led on to a flight of steps going down to the garden.

Tea was set out on a table, with strawberries in their own green leaves, and honey, fresh from the hive, with many other good things; but it was not the eatables that made me draw a long breath of rapture. It was what seemed to me the endless number of books—books of every kind I saw at a glance, grave and gay, ancient and modern, poetry, novels, biography, art, in all manner of bindings, from purple morocco to the humble paper yellowback.

They were piled high on the floor, and in boxes, some opened, some still unopened. Rows of the books were hastily set on the shelves, to be out of the way, I felt sure, for they were higgledy-piggledy, upside down, long and short, and most incongruous neighbours.

You, good people, who have never wanted for books, can have no idea of what the sight meant to me, to whom a solitary book newly come my way, represented hours of delight. I simply stood and sniffed at the books, inhaling the smell of them with rapture. For the moment I did not ask to touch; to gape at them was enough; and twice Mrs. O'Connor asked me to take my seat at the tea-table unheard.

"There!" said Oona, "she never saw so many books before in her life. Come away, Miss Hilda dear, and have your tea; but sure I never saw the day, no matter how young you were, that you wouldn't rather have an ould romaush of a book than your good food."

"Is that the way with her?" said Mary O'Connor, as I came reluctantly to the table. "Whethen she'll have to be findin' her way to Rose Hill every day that's in it, if she's to get through half the books. I hear there's thousands more to come down."

"That won't give her much trouble," said Oona proudly. "Why, before she was three she could read me the whole news was on the papers."

"You don't say so!" cried her cousin, with hands flung out in admiration.

"I wouldn't blame you for doubtin' my word, for Dr. Whittaker, Lord rest him, did the same. He was in vaccinatin' Master Donald, and Miss Hilda sat on her little creepy-stool readin' the paper to her dolls. ''Tis gibberish,' says he. 'Askin' your pardon, sir, for contradictin' you, 'tis sense,' says I. 'Come over here, my little girl,' says he, 'an' tell me,' he says, 'if the Rooshians is smashin' the Turks, or the Turks knockin' smoke out o' the Rooshians.' Well, of course, the innocent child took him seriously, an' so she came an' perched on his knee, an' began to read for him—though, of course, some of the words was too big for her little mouth. 'Oh, by this and that,' says he, 'this licks creation! 'Tis a progedy she's goin' to be, or else,' says he, 'she'll grow up without any sinse at all in her brain-pan.'"

If Mary O'Connor hadn't heard this tale a thousand times the young Brandons had, and the boys at this stage looked up indignantly from their strawberries and cream, to tell Oona they were rather tired of it.

"'Deed, then," she said, very angry with them, "if a bit o' the same love of the book had been passed on, 'twould have been a good thing; but Master Hugh there said he'd rather ait his jography than learn it, and Master Donald, it's well known through the barony, turned his Ailments of Euclid into kite-tails."

At this stage, seeing things looked a bit stormy, I interposed with an inquiry about the "ingenuities", and the attention of the boys was distracted.

After tea we roamed about the house and gardens at our will. The rooms were still full of big packing-cases and swathed articles which made progress difficult.

"General MacNeill seems likely to settle here, Mary," I said, looking round at the assemblage of furniture.

"I'm told he says he doesn't want to stir out of it till he dies. I hear he's burnt black, poor man, with the Ingy sun, an' his temper not what it ought to be by raison of the annoyance of them Red Injins he's been commandin'. I wouldn't be surprised now if he's come here to get his mind quiet an' his temper settled before he laves this world for a better. Ireland's an elegant quiet place for makin' your sowl."

I smiled, remembering that Lady O'Brien had said something of the same kind.

After we had viewed all the curiosities, and enjoyed ourselves immensely, I sat down quietly in the library to wait till the boys and the twins were satiated with the gardens, and while the two old cronies were having their gossip in the housekeeper's room.

The library was deliciously quiet, and I wandered about from one heap to another, picking off a book and looking into it, and then drawn by the embarrassment of my riches to another one. I felt as if I should be a long time in that library before I could settle down to read. I should have to look into every single book first. There were delightful little ladders by which to reach the upper shelves. I looked at the chaos of books up there.

"Ah," said I, "if I had a long, long day, I should ask for nothing better than to arrange those books!"

A sudden flash of inspiration came to me.

"Hilda Brandon," said I, "you were born to be a librarian!"

And indeed it seemed to me at the moment as though the earth could hold no fairer plot of peace than this cool place, with the green garden below, and the atmosphere inside cool green like the woods, and all those books waiting to be handled and dusted and loved.

Presently the twins came up the garden steps, and said they should like to go home, by which I guessed that their fruit-eating capacity had come to an end.

"I hope you won't be horribly upset to-morrow, little girls," said I; but they assured me that they could have eaten a great deal more if they really wanted to, only they feared that the boys would make themselves ill with the green apples they were eating after all the ripe fruit.

However, a boy's digestion is a wonderful thing, and the interest those boys, and the twins as well, showed in their supper on the way home, fairly amazed me.

Before we left, Mary O'Connor gave me a very urgent invitation to come and read all the books I liked, and Oona seconded her.

"'Twill do you a world of good, Miss Hilda," she said, "an' keep you from mopin' about by yourself, so that the sight of you keeps my own heart sore."

"But what would General MacNeill say?" I said hesitating, for I wanted very badly to come.

"What would he say!" exclaimed Mary indignantly; "only that he was a proud man to have a clever young lady like yourself enjoyin' his ould books. But anyhow he's not due this month yet, and you can come in by the garden door without even knockin', but just come an' go as you like. There's no one will make or meddle with you, an' sure when the master comes, an' ould Lady O'Brien fetches him over to see you, you can just spake up an' ask him if you mayn't have the run of the place."

"Very well, Mary," said I, "I'll come."

Indeed the books seemed such a paradise to me that I did not stop overlong to examine my scruples about invading General MacNeill's domain. After all, unless he was a perfect curmudgeon, he could not object, and then his friendship with Esther's godmother seemed to make him a kind of friend of ours too.

Yes, on the whole, I thought I might venture to accept Mary's invitation, and indeed the thought of it sent me to bed that night with more cheerfulness in my heart than I had known since Pierce died.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MASTER OF ROSE HILL.

The following day, after I had presided at lunch, I set out with great joy for Rose Hill, and spent a long afternoon among the books, and though I had said, to quiet my scruples, that I would not go too often, yet there did not seem a day of the days following that I could bear to keep away. It changed all the face of my daily life for me, to look forward to those quiet hours. As Mary O'Connor had said, no one disturbed me. I went in by the garden and up the rose-wreathed steps, and found the door standing invitingly open every day. Then at four Mary would send me in a little tea-tray, which I was usually glad enough to see after my climb up the hilly road, and my rest among the books; and then after tea I would read again till it was time to go home.

But after a good many days spent in sipping the honey of the books, an eagerness came on me to arrange them in their shelves, so I asked the pretty little English maid who brought my tea if she could fetch me a duster and a feather-brush.

"Lawks, miss," she cried, "wotever for?"

"I'm going to arrange the books, Jane," said I. I never could bring myself to call her "Jenkins", by which name she had been known in her other situations, she told me, and Mary O'Connor was in sympathy with me on this one point, though she could seldom be accused of over-consideration to her subordinates.

"If I was in a place," Mary said, "and they called me 'O'Connor', I'd ask them if it was a dog they were spakin' to, and take my box and walk."

Jane was so perturbed by my desire for activity that she carried my request to Mary herself, who came hurrying in.

"That omadhaun of a girl's after comin' to me with a story about your wantin' a feather-whisk and a duster, Miss Hilda. I told her no Brandon could want the like. They haven't got their hearin' right, them cratures; often an' often when I do send them to turn out the upper bedrooms, 'tis in the drawin'-room, where the painter-men are workin', I'll find them. And then they'll say they didn't understand me rightly. 'The shoe's on the wrong foot, my girl,' says I. 'If it was myself didn't understand your outlandish up-and-down curlykews of a way of spakin', there'd be nothin' wonderful in it'."

"But I do really want the feather-brush and duster, and a big apron, if you will lend them to me, Mary. I do so want to get those books in order."

"You'll be fallin' down an' breakin' your neck," said Mary doubtfully.

"I'll do nothing of the kind," I assured her. "I'll take my time about it, and set up all the books by degrees. I shall love to do it, and when the General comes home he'll think you and your handmaidens have been so clever, Mary."

"You won't tire yourself, honey?"

"I'll leave off the minute I'm tired. I'll promise you that, Mary," cried I, all eagerness to begin.

So Mary brought me a big serviceable apron, and manufactured me a mob-cap out of a piece of muslin, to keep my hair from the dust, and, so protected, I began my labours. Mary had the remaining packing-cases opened for me, so that I had all the books under my hand. I said to myself that I was giving General MacNeill a quid pro quo for reading his books, but I really set out to arrange them for the sheer pleasure the task gave me. It was slow work, but it was quite delightful when one had got a comely shelf-full of them together, to sit down and survey one's handiwork, and enjoy a well-earned rest and recreation.

But between finding out the books and sorting them, and occasionally altering the whole arrangement of them, things got on slowly. It was nearing the month's end, and yet only one side of the library had been done. I was beginning to grow hopeless about finishing the job before the General should arrive and put a stop to my labours, but as yet there was no word of his coming. I dreaded that coming, which should shut me out of the library, and send me back to my former loneliness.

I had gone over one afternoon, and entered by the garden as usual, and, having donned my cap and apron, I was working away furiously at an upper shelf. Suddenly I heard a cough behind me, and it startled me so much that it was a mercy I didn't fall. But my lameness has taught me caution, so I turned round very carefully and sat down on the top step of the ladder to survey the intruder.

It was an old gentleman with a face the colour of mahogany and a bristling white moustache—General MacNeill, of course. Neither of us said anything for a minute, and then he coughed again, a short sharp cough, exactly like a little bark. At the sound, Paudeen, who had been eyeing him watchfully from the rug at the door on which he lay every afternoon, responded with a bark which might have been an echo.

The old fellow looked towards Paudeen irately, as if he suspected mockery, then back at me.

"What is your name, my girl, and what are you doing with those books?" he snapped.

"My name is Brandon, sir," said I meekly, "and I'm putting the books in order."

"H'm! You'll be a strange kind of housemaid if you're able to do that. Who put you to do it?—Mrs. O'Connor? Hey? What kind of a fool is the woman to put you to such work?"

"If you please, sir," said I, "she didn't. I put myself to it."

"Hoity-toity! Is this how discipline is kept? How do you suppose that plan would work in the army, young woman, if every man put himself to whatever work he liked?"

"Badly," said I.

"Badly is the word," he said emphatically. "And now if you'll please to step off that ladder I'll see what kind of hay you've been making of my library."

I came down meekly and stood watching him, while he went up in my place and began examining my shelves.

"H'm, h'm!" he said to himself. "Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,—not so bad, by Jove! It must have been a chance shot her sticking them side by side. H'm, h'm,—Horace, Catullus, Pindar,—couldn't have done it better myself."

He came down with great agility and faced me, frowning.

"Now, look here," he said gruffly, "are you a classical housemaid?"

His tone was so aggressive that Paudeen got up from his rug and came towards us, growling suspiciously.

"Be quiet, Paudeen," said I; and then answering my interlocutor: "No, sir, I'm not classical; I've only gone by what I've heard."

"Where did my housekeeper pick you up? Do you belong to the neighbourhood?"

"Yes, sir."

I was beginning to wonder with some alarm how I should own up to this very irascible-looking old gentleman, when Mary O'Connor came in. She held up her hands, standing behind him, in amazement. Then she came forward.

"Shall I bring your tea here, sir?" she asked, evidently under the impression that there was nothing to be explained. "I see Miss Hilda's been tellin' you that I allowed her to read among your books. I told her, sir, that I knew you'd make her kindly welcome."

"Miss what?" he thundered, so suddenly, that Mary jumped.

"Why, Miss Hilda Brandon, sir," she answered stiffly. "Miss Brandon, of Brandon. Miss Esther lives with Lady O'Brien,—an' a kinder an' sweeter young lady than Miss Hilda—There,—she's give herself no end of trouble over them books."

The old fellow whisked off his skull-cap and made me a somewhat chilly bow.

"You've been laughing at me, young lady," he said.

"Oh no, indeed, General MacNeill!" I said; "it was you that took me for a housemaid, and I was just making up my mind to undeceive you."

"But you called me sir."

"Only homage from a young woman to a famous soldier," said I cheerfully.

"Very well," he said, his grimness relaxing. "Punishment—you'll have to pour out my tea, and afterwards explain to me what in thunder set you to doing my servants' work."

"You said before that no servant could do it."

"You are right. Well, my librarian's work, if I had such a functionary?"

"Love of it, General."

"And you'll give it up now?"

"I suppose so," said I regretfully.

"I don't see why. If you loved it before, you love it now, and I sha'n't interfere with you. A battered old hulk like me in the house needn't make much difference. There's plenty for me to do getting other things into order without my hindering you. You'll come, hey?"

"Yes, I think I shall," said I.

"That's right. And now pour out the tea."

I grew quite to like General MacNeill that very first day, he was so kind and gentle in looking after my wants, and then he took my little Paudeen on his knee and fed him with dainty little bits, so that I began to suspect an unusually kind heart under the gruff exterior.