But for Paddy and Jack, there was only increased dread, though they both strove bravely to continue to hide it beneath an assumed merriment.
Paddy saw, as her mother, the light in Eileen’s eyes, and something seemed to grow cold within her, and she bit her teeth together, murmuring savagely, “I’ll kill him, if he’s been trifling with her.”
Jack saw it, too, and his hopes grew weak, for he believed he was already worsted; and he saw, with an inward yearning, the vision of all the happy, careless, sunny days at Omeath passing slowly and surely away. “What should he do?” he asked, “and where should he go?”
His two devoted aunts noticed there was something wrong later on, before separating for the night, and in Miss Jane’s bedroom, they asked each other anxiously.
“What is it?—what is wrong with our boy?”
Miss Mary having the greater intuition, was the first to offer a solution. “Can it be Eileen?” she asked with dread—“Eileen and Lawrence Blake?”
They looked into each other’s eyes with a sudden sense of awakening.
“Surely not—” murmured Miss Jane, but her face belied her words.
“Oh, sister,” breathed little tender-hearted Miss Mary, “if it is true he will suffer so. I can’t bear to think of our boy suffering,” and two big tears gathered in her eyes.
“Don’t fret, sister,” said Miss Jane bravely, blinking back a suspicious moisture in her own eyes, “I don’t think it can have gone far enough for that. You see we have lately somehow associated Eileen and Lawrence, and Jack, of course, knew, so he would be guarded against caring too much. Probably it is just the sudden realisation that a change must come over their old happy life, and he will quickly get accustomed to it. There is still Paddy, and I have always hoped so—” she paused, and then concluded with a little smile, “What a dear, wild, irresponsible pair they would make!”