The dog followed her closely; but at the door she stopped and looked at him.
"No, Mick! You cannot come!"
By some extraordinary sagacity the animal whimpered, and pressed closer to her skirt.
With an almost fierce impulse she stooped, kissed him once; then, holding him back, slipped through the door and closed it.
He gave a frantic bark of misery, but she did not pause, she did not even look back. Walking rapidly, she passed across the hall and out into the open.
Turning to the right, she skirted the stable-yard and the orchard, and, hurrying past the spot where years ago Milbanke had asked her to be his wife, took the path to the Orristown cliffs.
Her thoughts trooped up like living things as she stumbled forward along the uneven track. She was conscious of no fear, only of a desolating loneliness—an enormous sense of futility, of finality. Last night she had looked into the eyes of Fate, propounding the question of how she was to carry on her life, and to-day she had read the answer in the face of the portrait.
She hurried on unseeingly, covering the same track that her father had covered on the night he had ridden out and met death on the dark headland.
From time to time she stopped and looked at the sea—looked at the long curve of shining beach with its margin of dark wreckage—looked at the clustering cottages of Carrigmore, and marvelled in a dumb way at the tragedy that could underlie so calm a scene.
She had none of the nervous panic that had assailed her the night before. She was conscious of nothing but a black despair—a despair such as Denis Asshlin had been wont to drown in drink and cards. She had lived her life; she had had her chance; and the end was failure. She had tangled the thread of her existence; and the one hand that could have unravelled the tangle was closed against her.