"Listen here to me!" she said softly. "Child or no child, you thought about marryin' her before ever I said it. But you'd never riz the courage to do it. You're not like the Asshlins, that would tear down the walls of hell if they wanted to be gettin' at the divil; you'd like somebody to take him be the hand and draw him out nice and aisy for you——
"There she is up in that lonesome house, frettin' her heart an' cryin' her eyes out. Why can't you go up an' take her, before somebody else does?"
As she came to the last words her rough voice dropped. Her loyalty to her dead master, her anxiety to see his child in a place of safety poured from her in crude eloquence. To her primitive mind Milbanke appeared as the ideal husband—a man of dependable years, of wealth, of good social position; and all her affections, all her energies yearned to make the marriage. She could not have framed the fear that possessed her; but her instinct, her acute native intuition warned her unanswerably that the daughter of Denis Asshlin would need protection, and would need it before long. With an impulsive gesture she stretched out her hand, and, touching Milbanke's shoulder, pushed him gently forward into the yard.
"Go on, sir!" she urged softly. "Go on up an' take her, before somebody else does!"
CHAPTER VI
It may be surmised without fear of misconception that never during the smooth course of his uneventful existence had Milbanke been so rudely shaken into self-comprehension as by Hannah's unlooked-for onslaught. Left to the placid guidance of unaided instinct, it is almost certain that he would have left Orristown whenever the hour of departure arrived, innocently unconscious that any parting pangs could be attributed to a personal cause. It is possible that, with the passage of time, he might have acknowledged that somewhere in the inner recesses of his mind there was a shrine where one face, more changeful and alluring than any other he had known, reigned in solitary state; but beyond that tardy acknowledgment he would not have dared to venture. Later still, perhaps, if circumstances had compelled him to resign his guardianship over Clodagh in favour of some possible husband, it is within the bounds of reason to conjecture that understanding of his feelings might have come to him when, having said good-bye to the young girl just crossing the threshold of life, he returned to his home, newly and bitterly alive to his age and loneliness. But now, in the light of present events, all such suppositions had become valueless. As if by some powerful outside pressure, his eyes had been opened, and he stood dazed and elated before the new road that opened upon his vision.
His brain felt light and unsteady, his limbs were imbued with a sensation of unaccustomed buoyancy as he turned, impelled by Hannah's words, and moved across the yard towards the arched gateway. A half-admitted, intoxicating sense of imminent action possessed him; and as he walked forward it seemed that he scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet.
Almost without volition, he passed from the stone-paved courtyard into the sweep of gravelled pathway that fronted the house. For the first time in his existence he was conscious of being borne forward on the tide of his emotions; and the knowledge had an exhilarating, unbalanced daring that suggested youth.
As though he feared the evaporation of his mood, he made no pause on gaining the pathway, but went straight forward towards the house with a haste and impetuosity very foreign to his formal nature. On his second entry into the hall, he paid no heed to the chill desolation of the place, but crossing the intervening space, began immediately to mount the stairs.
Scarcely had he reached the highest step, however, than he halted incontinently. For, as though in direct response to the thoughts that were filling his mind, a door on the corridor opened, and Clodagh appeared.