Mrs. Gillin was so taken aback that, to conceal her emotion, she retired abruptly from the garret, and stared out of the landing-window to consider this intelligence.
'A useful game for himself,' she murmured. 'He knows--he who has wrecked them all--and has left this one here so long with a thousand pounds upon his head! What can he mean? Can he in this be sincere? No. The days of miracles are past.'
Madam Gillin had seen our friend Cassidy once without his jovial mask. It is astonishing how deceived we are in people! We may live with them on familiar terms for years, and discover at last by a gleam that their real selves are quite other from what we thought. Sometimes the gleam never comes at all. How many sons are there who never knew their mothers? How many mothers who have never known their sons--the real person with the veil withdrawn? Madam Gillin had seen Cassidy once when he was himself, and felt satisfied that he could never be true except to his own interests. Then this new position which looked the darker for the light she could throw on it, twisted itself in her mind, displaying all its facets. He knew that the young man, on whom so much depended, had been lying for weeks and weeks in ambush at the Little House. Why did he leave him there? Was he waiting for the reward to be doubled? When the moment arrived for her protégé to be taken--when he chose to speak, what would become of HER? He would surely ruin her. Could the judges save her from the penalties which would accrue from taking a Protestant under age to mass, as well as harbouring an arch-rebel?
'Well, I can't help it,' she said aloud, mentally tossing up the sponge. 'I've done what I thought right. It's difficult to see the way. He must be got out of this while there's time, and New Year's Eve so near, too! Oh that I had learnt this before!' Painful misgivings possessed her mind. 'Pray God and the Holy Mother that the poor boy may be spared!' she whispered. 'Knowing what I do, it's bitterly sorry I am for him. That proud mother of his will burn for what she's doing some time or other, though she's happy now.'
Mrs. Gillin, argus-eyed as she thought herself, could not know that the chatelaine of Strogue had already passed through a part of the travail of her punishment. She had to judge by the face, which was a mask--the face which was stony and cold enough--as cold as a face of marble.
Suddenly (as she meditated) the buxom lady saw something which caused her to crouch down and draw hastily back from the window.
'It's come!' she murmured; 'I felt it here in my heart. What a mercy that he told me, or it would have come on us unawares! Norah!' she called with caution down the stairs, 'send Phil up here this minute.' Then she sped to the garret. 'My lad,' she said quickly, 'hurry now! Get through the trap on to the roof. Phil must do the same. I'll tidy the place in a jiffy! Ye can both lie cosy in the valley of the roof.'
'What's the matter?' asked Terence, without moving.
'Matter enough. There's a party coming down the road. I'll stake my head it's Sirr or some of them. They're coming to look for you!'
'Then give them some of your Lafitte, my second mother!' laughed Terence, carelessly, 'and pack them about their business.'