There was a brief pause. Nugent glanced at the clock, and then again looked at me. He hesitated for a moment, as if waiting for me to speak; then, finding I did not do so, he picked up his gloves from the table by which he was standing.
“I think I must say good afternoon now,” he said, this time without offering to shake hands with me. “I hope there will be a better account of your uncle to-morrow before I start. I have only come down for a day about some business.”
I did not attempt any reply, and he left the room.
The stress was over, and, after an instant, I wondered why it had been so great. It was a long time now since I had thought myself near breaking my heart about him; when he came in, it had not so much as beaten faster. I had felt stunned, but it was only by the shock of seeing him again at such a moment. Now I assured myself that I was glad he had come and taken my thoughts for a little time from those ghastly ravings of my uncle. Seeing him had been a kind of assurance that things were going on in the usual way, and that I was not living in a nightmare. I was sorry that I had not taken his hand; by not doing so I must have given him a false impression, and I even wished now that he had stayed longer. In a few minutes I should have lost that feeling of faintness, and have been able to talk naturally to him.
The drawing-room had become very dark. I felt as if I were the only creature alive in the house, and Uncle Dominick’s words were again beginning to crowd back with new and insistent suggestion. I would not stay indoors any longer. There was still some daylight, and it would be better to wait outside in the fresh air till Dr. Kelly came.
I walked down the drive till I came to the fallen tree. I was more weak and shaken than I had believed, and I sat down on one of the great limbs that had sprawled along the ground. There was a heavy silence in the air; the sky was low and foreboding, and a watery streak of yellow lay along the horizon behind the bog. A rook rustled close over my head, with a subdued croak; I watched him flying quietly home to the tall elms by the bog gate. He was still circling round them before settling down, when a sound struck on my ear. I sprang to my feet and listened. It had come from the bog; and now it rose again, a loud, long cry, the cry of a woman keening. Every pulse stood still as I heard it, and I held to a branch of the tree for support, as the wail grew and spread upon the air.
Some one came down the steps of the French window of my uncle’s study, and ran across the grass towards me, and I recognized Roche in the twilight.
“Did ye see him?” he called out. “Did he pass this way?”
“Who?” I answered, starting forward.
“The masther—the masther!” he cried, and then stopped as the keen rose again from the bog. “God save us, what’s that? ’Tis from the bog—’twas the bog he was talking of all day! Run, miss, run, for the love of God!”