She told the birds about it as she hastened up to her beloved nook, and the little trickling streams, and the flowers, and the mountains that towered all round.
She was so sure he was coming back to her. Had he not lived in her thoughts and been the central figure of her dreams ever since he went away three years ago? Was it likely it could have been otherwise with him, after the way he had looked at her and sought her companionship?... And now he was to love her so much more than before, for had she not read and thought and studied, to make herself a fitter companion? She smiled to think what a little ignoramus she must have seemed to him three years ago. Of course she was that, compared to him, still, but she had at least tried to educate herself to a higher plane and knew that she had not tried altogether in vain. “Will he know it at once, I wonder?” she whispered to herself, sitting in her favourite attitude, with her elbows on her knees and her chin sunk deep in her hands, gazing at the deep blue of the distant sea. “Will he be glad? Is he feeling as I feel now?—as if Heaven had somehow come down to earth and shed a new loveliness over the mountains, and the valleys, and the sea?—as if one must always be good because of the joy in the world, and make everyone so happy that evil must eventually die out?”
Then she fell to dreaming golden dreams of love, and wonder, and tenderness, till her eyes shone, and losing all consciousness of time and space her soul carried her away into an unreal dreamland of ecstasy.
From this she was somewhat suddenly and forcibly awakened by the apparition of a stalwart form, not in the least ethereal or dream-like, with a gun on his shoulder and two brace of snipe in his hand. He had, moreover, emerald green on his stockings, a tan waistcoat, and a pale green tie instead of a terra cotta one that had raised such objections in the morning; and whatever Paddy or anyone else might like to say, he formed as pleasing a picture of a typical young Briton as any one need wish. He expressed surprise at seeing Eileen, but not being a good actor, any experienced ear would easily have detected that he had come to that spot with the express hope of finding her.
“Have you been up here long?” he asked, throwing down the gun and the birds in the heather and telling his spaniel to keep guard over them.
“About three hours, I should think,” she replied, looking a little askance at the gun. “Is it unloaded?”
“Yes. You’re not afraid of it, are you?”
“N-no,” slowly. “Isn’t it rather early to shoot snipe?”
“Yes, but there wasn’t anything else.”
“I thought you and Paddy were going across to Rostrevor this afternoon?”