"Ah! don't talk about such things," said Pam, in her turn, and her heart was sore lest she had grieved him. "No girl could have a happier fate than to be your wife."
And since she felt what she said for the moment she contrived to set his fears at rest.
It was the most humdrum betrothal from the point of view of young and romantic persons. Lord Glengall was no ardent wooer. His manner was more the manner of a father than of a lover, and his moments of greatest contentment were only marked by a deeper quiet. While Pam and he were much together, their talk, unlike the talk of young lovers, was of everything but themselves. Lord Glengall had plans for the disposal of the great wealth he had brought from the gold-fields; but they were plans in which personal ambition had no share.
Mr. Graydon was still languid after his illness, and during those summer days a great quietness seemed to have descended upon Carrickmoyle.
"Sorra's in it!" said Bridget, complaining. "'Tis as if there wasn't a bit of young life about the place. 'Tis more like as if there was goin' to be a funeral thin a weddin'."
"I'll tell you what, Miss Sylvia," she protested to her prime favourite; "there's one-legged Grady the gardener, above at his Lordship's, an' his mouth is dry axin' me. I declare I'll take him, if only to make a bit av a stir. They say he used to bate the first wife wid the wooden leg, but he'll not look crooked at me, never fear."
Sylvia, too, shared in the depressing quiet, and even the dogs lay and blinked all day in the hot sun, and were too lazy to go out on the bog for a dip in the icy-cold water.
Sylvia had her troubles. Her friend Miss Spencer, to whom she was oddly attached, was failing. No illness of a violent kind, but simply a wasting away and decline had seized upon the poor little spinster; and it was a case in which doctor's prescriptions were of no use. Miss Spencer's time had come.
Sylvia visited her friend indefatigably, sitting with her long hours daily, within doors if the weather were bad, by her wheeled sofa on the lawn during the fine hot days. She took her grief with a certain bitterness of wrath against that man of long ago who had wronged the poor little lady so irreparably. It made her curt of speech, and little disposed to notice what was happening where other folk were concerned, and her engrossment made Pamela's lot more lonely.
Sylvia's court had in no way diminished its loyalty or its numbers, but just for the present the young men were put on one side, and accepted their position. They were able to sympathise with one another, for their lady had never bestowed a mark of preference on any one over the others, that jealousy could be excited. But their absence from Carrickmoyle, while it sensibly brightened other houses, made that more lonesome.