Mrs. Joyce was in the middle of replying that she was grandly, and had just run over to Mrs. Keogh on a message, when Theresa herself came in.
Denis jumped up quickly, saying: "Ah, Theresa, it's a great while since I've seen you."
But Theresa only lifted her head without turning it, and walked straight on as if nobody had accosted her.
"Arrah, now, Theresa darlint, don't you see Denis O'Meara?" said her mother, puzzled and rather dismayed.
And then Theresa did turn and look at him. "Yis, I see him," she said—and, indeed, she might as easily have overlooked the red flame in a lantern as the tall scarlet lancer in her mother's little misty-cornered room. "I see him," she said, "and I hate the sight of him." And thereupon she turned again, and walked out of the door, leaving a dead silence behind her.
This was one of the very few harsh sayings that Theresa Joyce has uttered in the course of her long life, and it came like a shock upon her hearers.
Mrs. Joyce at last said blankly: "What at all has took the child?"
And Bessie Kilfoyle said to Denis, who stood dumbfounded: "But indeed now, you may be sure there's not a many up here, at any rate, who do that."
But he replied: "If she does, it's many enough for me, Mrs. Kilfoyle. And I won't stop here to be drivin' her out of the house. So I'll say good-bye to yous kindly, for I'll be off now to Dublin to-morra or next day."
"And in coorse," Mrs. Joyce remarked ruefully, after he had departed, retreading his steps through the bright fresh morning with so crestfallen a mien that all the neighbours knew things had not run smoothly, "you couldn't raisonably expec' him to stay here to be hated the sight of. And indeed, what wid one thing and another, it's none too good thratement the poor lad's got up at Lisconnel, more's the pity."