“What a glorious moon!” I said, bitterness in my heart.
“Don’t you find it a little chilly?” was her reply, as she turned into the drawing-room.
My own, shall I call it temper, or insanity, or what? lost me this chance, for which I had been longing with such fervent yearning. I felt terribly irritated with myself and angered against her. She should have expressed sorrow at my being prevented from going over to Father O’Dowd’s. Had she cared one brass farthing she would have declined the expedition; but instead of this she silently accepted Welstone’s ciceroneship, and exclaiming, “Don’t you find it a little chilly?” left me standing all alone, like the idiot that I was. And yet had I not acted strangely, rudely, in intimating my intention of remaining at Kilkenley? Was I not her host, and should I not make every effort within the scope of my power to render her visit as agreeable as possible?
I followed her into the drawing-room. The light of two moderateur lamps muffled in pink shades threw a delightfully tender glow all over the apartment. Our furniture was very old-fashioned. It bad all been purchased when my great-grandmother had been brought home, and was esteemed a wonder of its kind then. The rosewood settees and spider-legged chairs were upholstered in the richest flowered brocade, very faded now, but highly respectable in their antiquity. The mirrors were oval in gilt frames, an eagle holding a chain, to which was appended a golden ball, surmounting each. A sofa large enough to seat a dozen people in a row graced one wall, while a thin old-fashioned card-table, over which many hundreds of guineas had changed hands, adorned the other. In the alcove, in a stiff, formal, uncompromising arm-chair, so utterly different from the inviting lounges of to-day, sat Mabel, turning over the leaves of a scrap-book that had been made up by my grandmother.
Dressed in simple white, with a sprig of forget-me-not in her golden hair, she looked so lovely that my heart flew to her.
“I hope you haven’t caught cold. Shall I close the window, Miss Hawthorne?”
“Oh! dear, no; it was just a passing sensation, a shiver.”
“Somebody was treading upon your grave,” I said, alluding to the popular superstition.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
When I had told her, “I should like to know where I shall be interred.”