“How can he have frightened them?” I asked.  “They have never borrowed money from him.”

The cloud deepened on my godmother’s face.

“It must be something about Luke,” she said.  “But whatever it is, I will swear it is not true.  Luke never did anything that would put his old father and mother in the power of Garret Dawson.  He has frightened them because I was not there to protect them.  I shall tear through his web of lies.”

As she said it the light came to her eyes and the colour to her lips, and I wondered that any one could ever have thought her plain.

“So you see, Bawn,” she said, as she took the letter from me and folded it up, “there was cause for our return.  You know I would not take you away from your enjoyment without cause.”

“Yes, I knew that,” I said.

Indeed, when we reached Aghadoe my grandmother was so tremulous in her joy at seeing us, and she clung so to Mary Champion, that we might have been away two years instead of two weeks.

It was late when we arrived, and there was supper prepared for us; and while we ate it my grandfather sat in his chair by the window, where we could not see his face, and was silent.  There was a gloom over the meal, a sense of trouble impending.  It was not at all a joyful occasion as it ought to have been, since we had come back.  My grandmother hovered about us uneasily, pressing this and that thing upon us, for she had bidden Neil Doherty to lock up and go to bed, saying that we could wait on ourselves, to his manifest indignation.  And presently my grandfather got up, excused himself for being tired, and, having kissed my godmother and me on our cheeks, went away with a tired and uncertain step.

Something had happened.  It was obvious that there was a sense of it in the faces of the old servants.  Even Dido whimpered uneasily under my caressing hand.

My grandmother remembered to ask me if I had heard from Theobald, and it was only then, with a sense of shame, that I realized the absence of Theobald’s letters and the fact that I had not noticed their absence.  Why, I had not written to Theobald for several weeks past; but I did not dare to tell my grandmother so.  Of course there were many reasons why Theobald should not have written.  He was very gay in India, much in demand in his spare time for all sorts of entertainments.

“If there had been any serious reason for his not writing we should have heard fast enough, Gran,” I said.

“Why, that is true, Bawn,” she replied.  “Still, where one loves one is unnecessarily anxious.”

I felt the rebuke of her words, though I knew she had intended no rebuke, and made up my mind with a rush of compunction to write a long letter to Theobald in the morning.

Miss Champion was staying the night at Aghadoe; and I thought it would be well to leave her and my grandmother together that they might talk over things.  Besides that, I had not yet read my letter and the moment was approaching when I might do so.  And all at once my patience seemed to have given out, to be quite exhausted.  So I took my bedroom candle and went.