She clung against the cross yearningly, and in the night air, with the calm stars looking down, the waves whispering on the beach, and her beloved mountains all around, she grew calmer and stronger. It pleased her to whisper her thoughts to the night, as if the unseen spirit of her beloved dead listened near.
“Ought I to run away, daddy? I remember how often you have said only a selfish, vain-glorious officer will risk his men against desperate odds, rather than retreat. ‘Retreat, if wiser, and take up a better position—never mind the dispatches home—save your men and win the glory as well; it is sometimes nobler to retreat than to go on.’ Is that what I must do, daddy? I feel there are desperate odds against me. Would it be braver to retreat? Is that what an Irish Fusilier would do? You, at least, will understand that I was not a coward.”
She pressed her lips against the granite for love of the grand and simple soul it stood to commemorate.
“Daddy,” she whispered, and there was a tiny, wistful smile on the fascinating mouth. “I’m not an Irish Fusilier, but, perhaps, I’m the-next-best-thing.”
Then she went quietly back to bed, with her mind made up.
But the next morning, it was only by a great physical and mental effort that she was able to appear at all like herself at the breakfast-table, and when the meal was finished she was glad to slip away unobserved.
Eileen’s suspicions, however, had been previously roused in the night by a light step in the passage, and, afterward, a dim figure crossing the garden. She was tactful enough to say nothing of this, but at the same time determined to try and find out if anything was wrong, and how she could help. In this Paddy had cause to be grateful, because her plans could scarcely he carried out without Eileen’s help.
When her sister sought her upstairs, and asked in a quiet, firm way, “What is the matter, Paddy? Something has happened to you,” she only hesitated a second, and then replied with as much calmness as she could muster:
“Yes, Eily, I’m in rather a difficulty. I was going to ask you and Jack to help me.”
“Paddy, we will do anything—anything,” Eileen cried earnestly.