The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people; and, if he was Kate Dundas's lover, as Launce in his jealous rage declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.
But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of attraction to the neighborhood—its pretty drawing-room is deserted. Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public, and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could assume for such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friendship and very little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her chance of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.
November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.
Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.
One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor's voice.
Belle is not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps; but if she has been fretting for Launce—as Honor thinks—she has certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.
She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.
"I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never hear anything at Donaghmore."
"The news!" Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.
"Oh, it's nothing very wonderful—perhaps nothing that you will call news after all!" Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and understanding it. "It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in Devonshire. Maybe she has gone back to him."