CHAPTER VIII
Myles Shannon had ever borne a passionate grudge against Mrs. Brennan. He had loved his brother Henry, and he felt that she, of all people, had had the most powerful hand in instituting the remorse which had hurried him to his doom. Mrs. Brennan, on the other hand, believed firmly that Henry Shannon would have married her, and made of her a decent woman, but for the intervention of his brother Myles. Furthermore, she believed darkly in her heart that the subtle plan of the disastrous "honeymoon" had originated in the brain of Myles, although in this she was wrong. She thought of Henry as being never of that sort. He was wild and mad, with nothing too hot or too heavy for him, but he was not one to concoct schemes. So, when Henry died, Mrs. Brennan had thought well to transmit her hatred of the Shannon family to his brother Myles.
Myles Shannon lived a quiet life there in his big house among the trees upon the side of Scarden, one of the hills which overlooked the valley. In lonely, silent moments he often thought of his brother Henry and of the strange manner in which he had burned out his life. With the end of his brother before him always as a deterrent example, he did not interest himself in women. He interested himself in the business of his cattle and sheep all through each and every day of the year. He did not feel the years slipping past him as he went about his easy, contented life, watching, with great interest, his beef and mutton grow up in the fields.
The cattle in particular stood for the absorbing interest and the one excitement of his life. He looked upon his goings and comings to and from the markets at Dublin and at Wakefield in England as holiday excursions of great enjoyment.
It was during one of his trips to England that he had met Helena Cooper at some hotel in Manchester. He was one to whom the powers of Romance had remained strangers, yet now, when they at last came into his life, it was with a force that carried away all the protection of his mind. He wanted some one to fill the loneliness of the big house on Scarden Hill, and so he set his heart upon Helena Cooper.
He returned to the valley a different man. Quite suddenly he began to have a greater interest in his appearance, and it was noticed that he grew sentimental and became easy in his dealings. It began to be whispered around that, even so late in life, almost at the close of the middle period which surely marks the end of a man's prime, Myles Shannon had fallen in love and was about to be married.
It was a notable rumor, and although it was fifteen years since the death of Henry Shannon, Mrs. Brennan, as one having a good reason to be interested in the affairs of the Shannon family, became excited.
"Indeed it was high time for him to think of it," she said to a neighbor one Sunday morning, "before he turned into a real ould blackguard of a bachelor—and who d'ye say the girl is?"