“Tell the truth while you can—while you are young. For when you are old your conscience is stiff and you can’t. Well, the marplot storm is almost over, and I suppose we may deal the cards for ‘three-handed Ombre.’”
She noticed—for what could escape her keen glance—that the young officer, though embarrassed and agitated, had an elated aspect, and the girl’s stately carriage impressed her. “My lady, that is to be!” she thought, with a glow of triumph. “And yet I departed this place only some three minutes and a half ago.”
Still the thunder rolled, but further and further and further away, and only the echoes were near—from the rocks of the neighboring river-banks, the mountains, and the foothills hard by. Still the lightning flashed, now in broad sheets, and now in long zigzag streaks beyond the eastern woods. The tempest had passed over, and the moon was struggling through the rack, now seeming on the crest of waves, again lying in the trough of tossing clouds, like some beaten and buffeted barque, resigned to fate, and riding out the storm.
Mrs. Annandale, seated at the table, glancing over the top of her cards, was annoyed to perceive Norah genuflecting at the door to the inner apartment, now opening it a bit, and as she caught the eye of her irate mistress, closing it hastily.
“You baggage!” called out Mrs. Annandale, with such sudden sharpness that Mervyn, notwithstanding his cast-iron nerves, started as if he had been shot. The door closed instanter, tight and fast, and Norah, leaning against it outside, had the strength to hope that her last hour had not come. “What ails that girl? Are you bewitched, you hussy?”
“Perhaps she wants something,” suggested Arabella, whose loyal temperament seldom made question of her aunt’s right to her peculiarities; but she was somewhat ashamed of their exhibition to-night—to-night, when she was both proud and happy.
“No, Miss, sit you still. By the time you and George Mervyn would be through with all your bowings, and counter-bowings, and minuet-ings, and handing each other to the door, the besom would have forgot what she wants, or would have run a mile for fear of me. Come in, girl, and speak up. Sure, I’ve no secrets to keep. Now, minx, what have you to say to this worshipful company?”
Norah, red, miserable, and embarrassed, emerged from the door and stood dropping courtesies of humble placation and twisting with a gesture of apology one corner of her apron between her fingers.
“Please, mem,” she said, “I do be hearing that same knocking what went on bangin’ an’ bangin’ in the storm, at the dure agin.”
“You ninny!” exclaimed Mrs. Annandale, in scorn. “Do you know that in these colonies they burn folks alive for hearing what they can’t hear and seeing what is not to be seen?”