I had never asked what the secret was, feeling that it must be something very terrible indeed when my grandfather would not tell it to Miss Champion.  I never meant to ask.  Let the proof of it be given up and forgotten.  There was even a certain dreary pleasure in feeling that I was going to save the Lord and Lady St. Leger from that disgrace.  It was not right the old should suffer and be afraid.

At last I put the letter inside my bodice and returned to the house.  I got upstairs unobserved and put it away in the tall, spindle-legged Sheraton desk which has held all my girlish treasures.  I was going to destroy the two letters from Anthony Cardew presently.  Then the old life would be done with indeed.

“Bless me, child,” said my grandmother, coming in on me as I closed the desk, “what a colour you have!  I have not seen you look so well this many a day.  What have you been doing to yourself?”

“Not rouging, Gran, I assure you,” I said lightly.  “I have been out in the frosty air and it has made my cheeks tingle.”

“Your wedding-dress has come home,” she said, “and Richard is here.  He wants to see you in it, Bawn.”

I remembered the superstition and wondered that she should have suggested such a thing.  If I had been going to marry Anthony Cardew I should have refused, but since I was going to marry Richard Dawson I was not fearful of omens.

“Very well,” I said; “I shall put it on and come downstairs.”

I had a young maid from Dublin, newly come to me, and she had not our superstitions, or she was too respectful to oppose her will to mine.  Anyhow, she dressed me in my wedding-dress, the fine thing of white silk, veiled with my grandmother’s old Limerick lace and hung with pearls.  She had dressed my hair high, quickly and deftly, and when I had on my wedding-dress she threw my wedding-veil over my head and fastened it with the diamond stars which were among my lover’s gifts to me.  When she had dressed me she wheeled the long mirror in front of me that I might look at myself.

I was not the same girl to look on that I had been.  There was a bright colour in my cheeks and my eyes were bright; but I had a swimming in my head and I felt hot and cold by turns.  I saw that I was splendid, for Margaret had put on me as many as she could of the jewels with which my lover loaded me, which used to lie about so carelessly that my grandmother had rebuked me saying I should be robbed of them one of these days.  I hated them as though they had been my purchase-money; and I had scandalized Margaret only the night before by letting my necklace of emeralds and diamonds fall to the floor and lie there.

As I went down the stairs I met one or two of the servants, who drew to one side to let me pass and lifted their hands in admiration.  Margaret walked behind me, being fearful, I think, that in my present mood I might let the long train sweep the stairs and corridors instead of carrying it demurely over my arm.