Conal saw only her shining eyes and the fluttering line of her mouth. He stood stock-still staring at her. It did not occur to his simple mind to ask whether it was for him her eyes were shining. Only that glad and eager note in her voice pleased him.
The Schoolmaster had heard people say that Deirdre was beautiful; but she had never seemed more beautiful than she was this evening, when she came out of the gloom, bringing into the quiet room and across the threshold of his troubled thoughts, her youth and buoyancy of spirit, the whole secret and subtle essence of her femininity in bloom.
"Oh I—I've just got back and came to see your father at once, Deirdre," was all Conal could say.
"Did you have a good trip?" she asked, taking off her hat and coat.
He wondered how much of his enterprise she knew. But there was no shadow on her face.
"Yes, all right," he said, a little awkwardly.
"I saw Mrs. Cameron at the store, father," she continued, busy with her own thoughts, and turning over in her mind what Mrs. Cameron had said to her, what she had said to Mrs. Cameron, and the plot, light as a spider's web, that they had woven between them for Davey's benefit.
"And as I was coming along home," she laughed blithely, "who did I meet on the road but Pat Glynn! And he put this little parcel into my hand, and said that he had been told to give it to me. He made me promise not to open it until I got in, too!"
She tore the wrappings of brown paper and newspaper from a little brown box, opened it and drew out a heavy, old-fashioned necklace made of links and twists of gold, with a locket set with rubies and pearls at the end of it.
"Oh, isn't it pretty!" she cried.