There was something terrible in the pastoral silence of the place. It associated itself mysteriously with her fears for Arthur; it suggested armed treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps——? Iris shrank from her own horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the window. As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on horseback rode up to the house. Was it Arthur? No: the light-coloured groom's livery that he wore was just visible.
Before he could dismount to knock at the door, a tall man walked up to him out of the darkness.
"Is that Miles?" the tall man asked.
The groom knew the voice. Iris was even better acquainted with it. She, too, recognised Lord Harry.
X
THERE was the Irish lord at the very time when Iris was most patiently resigned never to see him more, never to think of him as her husband again—reminding her of the first days of their love, and of their mutual confession of it! Fear of herself kept her behind the curtain; while interest in Lord Harry detained her at the window in hiding.
"All well at Rathco?" he asked—mentioning the name of the house in which Arthur was one of the guests.
"Yes, my lord. Mr. Mountjoy leaves us to-morrow."
"Does he mean to return to the farm?"
"Sorry I am to say it; he does mean that."