"Come over here this minute," said the squire. "Shake hands with me; you are a fine lad, you are a very fine lad. Oh, thank Heaven! I thought the colleen had done something wrong. It isn't a bit of matter about anybody else. Speak out, Pat, speak out; and, oh! alanna, alanna, forgive me, forgive me. I thought bad of you, my jewel, my sweet! Come into my arms, my colleen asthore. What matter who is black, when you are white as a lily?"
Dennis O'Hara's burst of passion was over as quickly as it had arisen; he went up to Bridget and folded his great arms round her slight young figure.
"But I am not white," she said, bursting into sudden uncontrollable weeping; "oh, I am not white, and you'll never love me any more, and my heart will break. I can't tell you now, before everybody. I just can't, I can't. Pat knows all about Janet. Pat can tell that story, and you are not going to be too angry with him; but I must go away, for I can't speak of the other thing. There, father, don't kiss me, I cannot stand it."
She wrenched herself out of his arms and flew from the room.
It was a glorious summer's day; the sun was blazing down from the sky with a fierce heat. Bridget felt half blinded with misery and confusion of mind. She put up her hand to her head and glanced up at the sky.
"I must tell my father everything when I see him next," she said to herself. "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?"
Footsteps sounded behind her. She felt impatient of anyone seeing her in her grief and distraction, and, turning to hide herself in the shrubbery, found that she was face to face with Norah.
"I seen you, me darling," said Norah; "I seen you when you ran out of the breakfast room all distraught like."
"You saw me? then you were listening, Norah," said Bridget, her tears drying rapidly in her sudden anger.
"And why not, alanna? and why shouldn't I listen when it was for the good of my own nursling? The squire says, 'Go and have some breakfast, Norah'; but what's breakfast to me when the light of my eyes, the child I helped to rear, is suffering. I listened, Miss Biddy, and when you run out of the room I followed you. You come with me, alanna. You trust poor Norah. Norah Malony and Pat Donovan 'ud spill their heart's blood for you, missie; you trust us both!"