Only an Irish Girl Part 6

He is flushed, excited, angry; Jack is cooler and graver. His face, as he bares his head to the light breeze, looks pale.

Honor divines instinctively that he, like herself, has seen something supernatural in this apparition.

But Launce scoffs at any such idea.

"It is some blackguard," he says scornfully, "got up on purpose to scare folks! He was within an ace of getting his skull broken for his pains."

Is it their overwrought fancy, or does a low mocking laugh float back to them?

Honor shivers.

"Let us get into the house," she says. "I feel as if I could not breathe out here; and don't let us talk any more about it, please!"

But Launce cannot hold his tongue; he does nothing but scoff at their credulity, and when they reach the house the first thing he does is to go straight to the dining-room and tell the whole story to his father.

The old man looks grave as he listens; it even seems to Honor if a little of the ruddy color dies out of his face.

"Best let these things alone, my boy," he says at last.

In his own young days such things as warnings were neither scoffed at nor disbelieved in.

"Let us keep our powder and shot for men of bone and muscle like ourselves, Launce, and not waste them on shadows."

If he had said, "Let us ask the old abbot up to supper, and treat him to a jorum of whiskey-punch," Launce could not have looked more surprised.

"Well," he says in a tone if disgust, "I did think you had more sense, father, than to believe in a fellow walking about some hundred and fifty years after his own funeral."

The old man smiles, but he says no more; and Honor feels that the appearance of this phantom has cast a gloom over the house that was scarcely needed.

"And Launce ought to have had more sense than to talk to the _pater_ about it," she says to herself, as she watches the squire's anxious face. "He ought to have remembered that the last time that horrid old abbot was seen about poor grandpapa was shot; and of course everybody said the abbot had come to warn him."

CHAPTER V.

After that night no more is seen or heard of the old abbot.

"Wait till the moonlight nights are past, and he'll turn up again,"

Launce says in his scoffing way.

But the nights are dark enough now--it is an almost sunless September, and yet they see nothing of the figure. To Honor has come an additional trouble--the engagement between her brother and Belle Delorme is broken off. Poor little Belle goes about like a ghost; her miserable eyes, which go so far to contradict the smile on her lips, fairly haunt Honor.

"If Launce ever loved her he could not bear to see her looking like that!" the girl says, in her angry surprise that he, her favorite brother, should prove so cruel. But Launce just now has eyes for no one but Kate Dundas.

The widow is more fascinating than ever. Two gentlemen are staying on a visit with her, one from London and one--who is eyed with suspicious disfavor by her poorer neighbors--from Dublin Castle itself.

There are dinners or card-parties almost every night, and, to use a vulgar expression, Launce Blake is never off the doorstep.

People are beginning to say that he will marry her and snap his fingers at the old squire, who, for some reason best known to himself, is no admirer of the brilliant widow.

"It's the greatest pity in the world that you couldn't keep your temper!" Honor says reproachfully to her friend, when she comes to tell her that the engagement is at an end. "I always told you Launce would not stand being found fault with; sure a child could lead him."

"Yes," Belle answers bitterly, "such a child as Kate Dundas! I knew from the first how it would end, dear. The woman means to marry him, and she will do it."

Honor sighs. It is dreadful to think of handsome Launce, with his brilliant prospects, being sacrificed to this woman, ten years older than he is, and the widow of a very "shady" major of dragoons.

"It is not as if he loved her!" says Belle, almost with a sob. "He does not love her. It's all a 'bewitchment,' as old Aileen would say; and, when she has got him, he'll be miserable."

"But we mustn't let her get him, dear; we must stop it, you and I."

"Then I'm sure I don't see how we are to manage it," Belle sighs.

Neither does Honor, but she is not going to admit that.

Twilight is setting in when Belle gets up to go home.

"Oh, dear, why have I stayed so long?" she says, with a little nervous sigh. "It will be almost dark before I get out on the road."

"And what about me here alone all the day--and I shall be alone for hours yet! The _pater_ has gone down to the Low Acres, and the boys are shooting Colonel Frenche's covers. They can't be home till dark."

"I don't know how you live, and that's the truth, Honor. We often say so at home. I should go mad, I know I should."

"Oh, I don't feel like that in the least; but sometimes I am lonely--very!"

And in truth it is a very wistful face that watches pretty Belle hurrying down the avenue. Honor has grown very thin and pale of late, and to-night, in her white gown, she looks thinner and paler than ever.

She is feeling the need of a friend sorely. Often Brian Beresford's words come back--"If ever you should want me, either as friend or lover, send for me, and I will come."

She wants him now--his friendship, she feels, would be a stay and shield for her--but she never dreams of taking him at his word, and asking him to come back to Donaghmore.

She is feeling unusually depressed as she looks out at the sky, which is slowly changing from pink and opal to a sullen gray.

A morbid dread has been upon her all the day, and the sighing of the wind in the pine-trees--for a storm is rising over a neighboring mountain--does not tend to make her more cheerful. She stands a little while watching the gra.s.s bending before the breeze and the dead leaves swirling and eddying round on the smooth-cropped lawn.

"The rain will be coming down before Aileen could get half-way home,"

she says to herself, and straightway goes down to the kitchen to forbid her old nurse's departure.

The old woman is sitting before the fire, her head slightly turned, as if she were listening.

At the sound of Honor's step on the tiled floor she springs upright.

"How ye startled me, honey! Shure in that soft white gown ye might pa.s.s for one of the blessed saints themselves. I took ye for a spirit--I did an' troth, Miss Honor, at the first glance."

She seems unusually tired and excited, but she will not hear of staying for the night at Donaghmore.

"Is it a tough old woman like me to be afeard of a sough of wind or a few drops of rain? No, no, my lamb! I'll go home this night, the saints being willin'!"

It is almost dark in the front hall as the girl pa.s.ses through; only a faint gray light comes in at the open door.

In the drawing-room the windows stand open just as she left them; and, wondering a little at the old butler's carelessness, she proceeds to fasten them herself.