Even when they were alone she always dressed in her most beautiful garments for her husband's eyes. To-night she had chosen a pink satin dress, close-fitting and trailing heavily, with her garnets.
She was sitting by the fire when Sir Shawn came in and his eyes lighted as they fell upon her.
"You look like your own daughter, Mary," he said, "only so much more beautiful than the girl I married. What a wonderful colour your gown is! It makes you like a beautiful open rose."
She laughed. His compliments were never stale to her.
"Where were you when I came in?" he asked. "'I looked in your chamber, 'twas lonely?'"
She evaded the question for a moment. "I made an attempt to enter by your window as I came back, but you had a visitor."
He was standing with his back to the fire, looking down at her, and she saw the ominous shadows come in the hollows of his cheeks.
"A troublesome visitor, Mary," he said. "When I come to you you exorcise all my troubles. You are the angel before whom the blue devils flee away."
She did not ask him further about his visitor. So many of them were troublesome. She often wondered at Shawn's patience with the people. The family quarrels over land were apt to be the worst of all: but there were other things hardly less disagreeable.
"Poor Shawn!" she said tenderly. "Sit down by me and let me smoothe that line out of your forehead! It threatens to become permanent."