She finished with a certain pathetic gaiety. With all his deep love for her she had not brought him joyfulness. Many people had noticed it. Her own well-spring of Joy had never run dry. It had survived even his sadness, and had made the house bright for their one child, but there had been moments, hours, when she had felt oddly exhausted, as though she had to bear a double strain of living.
"You saved me from utter despair,—'an angel beautiful and bright.'
That is what you seemed to me when you showed me your exquisite pity."
"Poor Terence!" she said softly. "Do you know, Shawn, I believe he was often on the edge of telling me his secret. Over and over again he began and was interrupted, or he drew back."
"Hardly, Mary. Men do not tell such things to the ladies of their family."
"Oh!" She coloured like a girl. "It was,—that. I thought it was … a lady … some one he knew in Dublin perhaps."
"It was a girl in Killesky. Her grandmother kept a little public-house. She looked like an old Gipsy-Queen, the grandmother. And the girl—the girl was like a dark rose. All the men in the county raved about her—the gentlemen, I mean. It was extraordinary how many roads led through Killesky. The girl was as modest as she was beautiful. Terence was mad about her. He knocked down a Connaught Ranger man who made a joke about her. That last leave—before he was killed—he was never out of the place. She had been at a convent school—the old woman had brought her up well—and she used to go on visits to school friends in Dublin. Terence told me he met her in Dublin when we were at the Royal Barracks. I implored him to let her alone, but he was angry and told me to mind my own business. That last time it was more serious. Poor little Bridyeen! I told him he ought to marry her. I think he knew it. It made him short-tempered with me. But … I hope … I hope…—" the strange anguish came back to his voice—"that he would have married her."
"I remember now," Lady O'Gara said. "I remember the girl. Aunt Grace thought very well of her; she told the old woman she ought not to have Bridyeen serving in the bar. She was a beautiful little creature, like a moss rosebud, such dark hair and the beautiful colour and the ardent look in her eyes. Old Mrs. Dowd answered Aunt Grace with a haughtiness equal to her own. Aunt Grace was very angry: she said the old woman was insolent. I did not learn exactly what Mrs. Dowd had said, but I gathered that she said she knew how to keep her girl as well as Aunt Grace did."
"I sometimes thought the old woman was ambitious," Sir Shawn went on, dreamily. "She used to watch Bridyeen while all those fellows were hanging about her and paying her compliments. I have sometimes thought she meant Bridyeen to marry a gentleman. Several were infatuated enough for that. The old woman was always about watching and listening. I don't think any of them was ever rude to the little girl. She was so innocent to look at. If any man had forgotten himself so far he would have had to answer to the others."
"What became of them—afterwards? Killesky seldom came in my path. I did not know that the picturesque old woman and the little granddaughter had gone till after we were married, when I drove that way and saw the garish new shop going up.
"It was like the old woman to carry off poor Bridyeen from all the scandal and the talk. You remember how ill I was. I thought that as soon as I was well enough I would go and see them—the old woman and the poor child. I would have done what I could. They were gone. No one knew what had become of them. They had gone away quietly and mysteriously. The little place was shut up one morning. You remember how pretty it was, the little thatched house behind its long garden. They had gone to America. Fortunately the people had not begun to talk."