“Yes, it was undoubtedly an indiscretion,” he murmured.
“Sitting in the sun?” said Lady Innisfail.
“Reading Paul Bourget,” said he.
“Of course,” said Lady Innisfail. “Talking of indiscretions, has anyone seen—ah, never mind.”
“It is quite possible that the old friend whom you say he wrote about, may be a person of primitive habits—he may be inclined to retire early,” said Mr. Airey.
Lady Innisfail gave a little puzzled glance at him—the puzzled expression vanished in a moment, however, before the ingenuousness of his smile.
“What a fool I am becoming!” she whispered. “I really never thought of that.”
“That was because you never turned your attention properly to the mystery of the headache,” said he.
Then they set off in the early moonlight for their walk along the cliff path that, in the course of a mile or so, trended downward and through the Pass of Lamdhu, with its dark pines growing half-way up the slope on one side. The lower branches of the trees stretched fantastic arms over the heads of the party walking on the road through the Pass. In the moonlight these fantastic arms seemed draped. The trees seemed attitudinizing to one another in a strange pantomime of their own.
The village of Ballycruiskeen lay just beyond the romantic defile, so that occasionally the inhabitants failed to hear the sound of the Atlantic hoarsely roaring as it was being strangled in the narrow part of the lough. They were therefore sometimes merry with a merriment impossible to dwellers nearer the coast.