Murtagh was not easily to be comforted, and Frankie exerted himself to divert Murtagh's thoughts into another channel.
"Never mind, Myrrh, dear," he said, "Marion will soon be well now, and I daresay they'll never find out which of your followers did it. Next week we shall all three be down at the seaside, where you'll never see Mr. Plunkett nor be worried with his rules. There will be nobody to order you about there. We will all do just whatever we please, and this whole affair will be forgotten by the time you come back."
After a time they called in Royal, and Frankie made him display his various accomplishments. Bobbo and Rosie joined them later in the day, and so they forgot to be unhappy for nearly the whole afternoon. Nessa, in the meantime, had spent her day at the Red House, but Marion was now quite out of danger, and towards four o'clock she prepared to return home.
Mr. Plunkett would not let her walk alone, and as they went together across the park he took the opportunity of thanking her warmly for all that she had done. The doctor had told him that without her timely help Marion might have died, and he was not a man to be ungrateful for any real obligation.
It was one of those moments of unreserve that come sometimes after a heavy strain.
"You may think me hard and cold," he said, "but Marion is to me more—" Then strong as he was his voice faltered. Instead of words there came only an inarticulate choking sound. He recovered himself immediately, but he did not try to finish his sentence. Then he allowed himself to be drawn on by Nessa's genuine admiration of his child to talk of her, till Nessa found herself wondering how she could ever have thought him so very disagreeable.
But as they emerged from under the trees and came in sight of the house his voice suddenly changed, and he exclaimed:
"Can you wonder, then, that I am determined to punish to the uttermost the heartless spite that in revenge for a just rebuke could imperil such innocent lives? You, Miss Blair, a stranger, can have little conception of all that we have been forced to suffer from Murtagh and his brother and sisters, but now it passes a matter of inconvenience. Impertinence and annoyance I could and would have endured, but to have my child hurt, to have her life, her reason endangered, to gratify the caprice of an insolent boy—"
He was transformed; he was no longer the correct Mr. Plunkett that Nessa knew. His face was pale, his eyes full of a strange light; he was a man,—a man struggling with a violent emotion.
"But you cannot think still that Murtagh set fire to your house?" she exclaimed, standing still and looking up anxiously into his face. "It was not Murtagh; I know it was not."