And presently, when Neil Doherty had taken away the cloth and we sat around the polished black table with nothing on it but a couple of candles and a decanter of port wine and glasses, the room looked very sad.

My grandfather tapped with his hand on the table, a thing I have known him to do when in trouble, and again the tears overflowed my grandmother’s eyes and ran down her cheeks.  And I felt that something was coming.

Then my grandfather cleared his throat, and leaning his face in his hand so that I should not see it, he said—­

“There is something that concerns you, Bawn, which I wish to lay before you.  You have been a good child always, kind and obedient to us.  And now it is in your power to do more for us than ever you have done before.”

He paused, and in the silence I heard the rain falling on the gravel path.  It had been threatening all the afternoon.  The wind soughed; it was going to be a wild night.

“Mr. Dawson has been with me this afternoon,” he went on.  “We talked of you, Bawn.  Bawn, child, Richard Dawson wishes to marry you.  Can you marry him, Bawn?  If you can do it Garret Dawson gives up to me on your wedding-day certain documents which hold in them the disgrace of our family.  We are old, Bawn, and we have loved you and been good to you.  There are some things we could not bear.  Child, can you say ‘Yes?’”

I felt now as though I had known it all the time.  I had a queer memory of a room in which a man lay imprisoned, the walls of which came closer and closer every day till they should press him to death.  It was a tale I had read somewhere.  So this had been closing in on me all those months.  I was to marry Richard Dawson, I who loved Anthony Cardew with all my heart and soul.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LOVER

“And Theobald,” I asked, after that pause—­“what about Theobald?”

“Theobald is young.  He has a thousand chances of happiness,” answered my grandfather, somewhat eagerly.  “If he could know he would be the first to sacrifice himself to prevent the disgrace.  I tell you, Bawn, that if Garret Dawson publishes the secret he holds it will kill your grandmother and me as surely as though he had shot us through the heart.  Child, child, we would have given you the world if we could!  Can you do this much for us?”

I looked at his poor old, twitching, grey face, at his hands that worked pitifully.  I saw my grandmother lift her streaming eyes to Heaven as though to ask for help.  They had been very tender to me, and they were old.  God knows no woman ever shrank more from a lover than I from Richard Dawson.  But, perhaps, if I sacrificed myself, following the example of our Lord himself, He would take me away from the intolerable marriage.  He would let me save them, and then He would take me to himself.

“I will marry Richard Dawson,” I said quietly.