'You are wasting your holiest affections, my child!' Doreen observed demurely; 'for men are dreadful, dreadful creatures who deceive and ride away. They don't care about our love one bit, unless we pretend to withhold it.'
'I love him so very much,' returned Sara, with a rapt gaze and trembling accents, 'that I could be content to worship him from a long way off if he would let me--he is so good and kind and noble!'
'He has never spoken to you of love?'
'Never.'
The child's eyes filled with tears, and Doreen's heart tightened for her. Poor fragile blossom. What might the nipping blast have in store for it?
'If any mischance were to befall him----' began the elder girl.
'I should die,' Sara answered simply, as though such a result was the only one which could be possible.
Doreen walked on in silence. She was twenty-three, her companion five years younger. Yet she could not comprehend this innocent pure heart which at eighteen gave itself unconditionally away to be trampled upon or treasured as its recipient should elect. She was sure that she had herself never loved any one, except Tone, and her father, and her mother's memory. The iron of the Penal Code had seared the germ of such a love within her if it ever had existed. She recalled the cold way in which she had calculated her capacity for playing Judith, and felt ashamed. But why should she, after all? The practical and the romantic were singularly blended in her character. What had a Catholic to do with love and the exchanging of young hearts? Fretfully she turned away from the enchantments of conservatories and hen-houses which she was displaying to her friend, and remarked as she led the way to the kennels:
'You said you had brought Terence with you. Can he be closeted all this while with his mother? That would be unusual. He does not favour us with much of his society. As I live, here's another visitor. It is such a lovely morning that I shall lay violent hands upon you all. Mr. Cassidy here is one of the best yachtsmen on the bay. We might go for a sail round Ireland's Eye if Terence would only condescend to show himself.'
'Oh yes!' cried ecstatic Sara, 'it would be entrancingly delicious.' She would run and tell my lady, who was probably breakfasting, that she must give us her son for the general good.