“If you wear the green.” And she held towards him a leaf which she had plucked.
He took it and kissed it, and then? Well, it is enough to say that Robert Grierson once more wore the green, as the affianced lover of Rosette.
CHAPTER IV.
La Donna e Mobile.
The announcement of her engagement to Robert Grierson was received with great pleasure both by Mr. and Mrs. ——, the latter from reasons already mentioned, and by the former because it was accompanied with the assurance that the young man had been once more brought within the ranks of the United Society. But although this was so, and that he attended their meetings, he hardly displayed his former zeal, and there were some who thought that his broken promise to his dead father weighed on his mind. Perhaps it did. But it is not unlikely that love was also responsible. And it happened that Rosette, who had been so fervent in the cause of liberty, and so eager to talk of it, since she had acknowledged her love for Robert and promised to be his bride, began to find other and more tender subjects for conversation, and as these two young lovers, all in all to each other, strolled down the green laneways or by the banks of the winding stream under the blue skies of April, he as well as she were fain to forget that already the conflict had begun which was to decide whether the United Irish Society or the English Government were to be masters in Ireland. But at last the time arrived which brought them face to face with the fact that a rising was soon to take place in Ulster, and that Robert Grierson would have to take his part in it.
And now the lovers were in the sweet month of May, when, under other circumstances, their hearts would rejoice with the joyous month of flowers. When they had plighted their troth only such a short time before they knew that the effort to throw off the British yoke was soon to be made, and they had seriously desired that the marriage was not to take place until it was over. The issue then did not seem doubtful, for were not the French coming to render assistance? and in a few weeks Ireland would be free from the centre to the sea.
But now not a day passed without rumours of arrests of popular leaders, and the daily court-martials in Belfast and elsewhere. These, it must be confessed, had little or no effect on Grierson, but they had a most unexpected effect on Rosette. A gloom seemed to settle on her spirits, for at night she had fearful visions of gallowses, and of strangled men, and in nearly every case the face of the victim bore a grotesque resemblance to that of her lover.