Whereupon for a minute she fell into a fit of silent rage, which, however, presently passed away—the only thing she said being the question, sharply asked—
“Would you have acted in that way, Ruari, if it had been a man?”
And the sting of the taunt, for such I felt it to be, lay perhaps in its truth. Howbeit, neither of us ever referred, in speaking to each other, to the matter again.
Richard Burke and his followers had left the castle, and had gone back to their own territory. He had made me the confidant of his hopes and fears with regard to his love for Grace O’Malley, and I desired greatly to know how he had sped in his wooing.
It was not, however, till long afterwards that I discovered he had pressed his suit, and that not altogether without success, but that she would give him no definite promise so long as her affairs were in so unstable a condition.
I did not know of any man in all the world whom I esteemed a fit mate for her, but the MacWilliam had many things in his favour, not the least being that he was a valiant soldier. That he had ranged himself on her side in her quarrel with the Governor also had its weight with her. I think, however, that at this time he had a very small share in her thoughts, as she was entirely wrapped up in the Earl of Desmond, whom she looked upon as the Hope of Ireland, and in the furtherance of her plans.
De Vilela was still at Carrickahooley, and had so far got healed of his wounds that he was able to be about for an hour or two each day. He greeted me with his never-failing courtesy, and after I had seen more of him I noticed that the air of melancholy gravity he had borne during the siege had in nowise changed, unless it were by being even deeper than before.
The sufferings he had undergone and the feebleness he still endured might easily have accounted for this. But I was persuaded that there was another reason, although it took me some time to arrive at this conclusion.
What put me in the way of it was that I caught him, when he believed himself free from observation, looking at me, not once, nor twice, but often, with a wistful intentness, as if he were trying to read my very thoughts, and so to pierce to the innermost soul of me. Why was this? Why was he thus weighing me as it were in the balance?
Eva was not so much with him now that he was regaining his strength, and, whether he was with her or not, he had not the look of a happy lover, that look which, me thinks, would be present notwithstanding pain and the shadow of death.