I had been dreaming the most wonderful things, and when I started out of my sleep I thought I was still dreaming.  Anthony was kneeling by me.  His arms were about me.

“I’ve been watching you for the last half-hour,” he said; “and, faith, I couldn’t wait any longer for a kiss.  Did I frighten you, darling?  You looked so much like an angel that you half-frightened me.  What have you been doing to yourself?  You were round and soft the last time I held you.  There is some change.”

“You should have seen me two months ago,” I said, “when I was going to die of marrying any man but you.”

“Ah, Bawn, darling, is it only that you are taking pity on my white head?  What is it that you see in me?  I am twice your age, child.”

“And the finest gentleman in the three kingdoms,” I said, stroking his hair.  “So fine a gentleman that you are out of date.  The commonplace world doesn’t grow fine gentlemen like you nowadays.”

Afterwards we had our first meal together.  They would not expect me back yet to lunch, and Anthony had arrived hungry as a hunter, while he protested that a man as much in love as he had no right to be hungry.

He had walked in unexpectedly, but Terence had not been taken by surprise.  Terence had things ready as though he had known the day and hour of his coming.  He served us as excellent a meal, according to my Anthony, as had ever been eaten.  As for me, I did not know what it consisted of, but only that Anthony and I sat opposite to each other and that Anthony’s eyes upon me made me sometimes fain to cover my own with my hands, and that when Terence Murphy went out of the room Anthony would come round the table to kiss me.  He said that the meal together was a stolen joy; something he had no right to till after we were married.  He said a great many happy, foolish things.  As for me, it was a meal in Elysium.

CHAPTER XL

KING COPHETUA

All that is long ago, and I am Bawn Cardew, who was Bawn Devereux.  We have a boy, dark and fine, like Anthony, and a girl who resembles me.  I am still in a bewilderment as to why Anthony should have chosen me.  I believe there is no woman, gentle or simple, who comes in contact with him, from my grandmother down to Katty McCann, the beggar-woman, who is not in love with him.  His way with women is always beautiful.  I have seen him carry a tramp’s squalling child up a steep hill and hand it to the mother at the top with the courtesy he would show to a duchess.  Elderly and plain women love him especially, because he is not aware that they are elderly and plain.  And men look up to him and admire him just as much after their fashion.

As I write I am in my own little morning-room at Brosna, which love has made beautiful for me.  Outside I see velvet lawns and bright flower-beds, and beyond the lawns and the ha-ha I can see in the park a herd of deer feeding.  At the moment it is quiet.  Then I hear the thud-thud of hoofs.  Our boy comes riding by on a little rough mountain pony.  Terence Murphy is giving him his riding lesson.  He sits in the saddle as straight as his father, although he is little more than a baby.  He will have Anthony’s straight, strenuous, clean look, like a blade or a flame.