It was well the journey did not take very long, or I don’t know how I should have endured the strain on my nerves.

While my mind was still in confusion the carriage drew up at the front door of the Abbey.  I alighted and went up the steps.  The hall door stood open, and as I entered Neil Doherty came from the back.  I thought he looked pale.

“Miss Bawn,” he began; but I could not wait to hear him.  I ran up the stairs to the drawing-room.  There was no one there.  I went back to the library.  As I went in my grandmother came to meet me.

“I thought I heard a carriage,” she said in a trembling voice.  “Did Richard bring you home?  What is the matter, Bawn?”

“The matter!” I repeated, “the matter!  Why, the matter is that Richard Dawson will have none of me.  He knew nothing of his father’s bargain.  When he found that I had been bought and sold for that he would have none of me.  I would have gone through with it, Gran.  You must forgive me and ask grandpapa to forgive me.”

She stared at me with a pale face.  In the pause there was a sound like a heavy sigh; then the falling of a body.

“Bawn, Bawn, what have you done?” she cried, hurrying away from me to the recess by the fireplace.  “It is your grandfather.  He has fainted once before this afternoon, and the doctor says it is his heart.  Oh, my dear, my Toby, you have had too much to bear and it has killed you!”

She was kneeling by my grandfather and had taken his head into her lap.  He had struck the fender as he fell, and the blood was flowing from a wound on his head, staining his silver hair.

Neil Doherty came rushing in.  He must have been at the door to have heard the fall.  He took my grandfather in his arms like a baby—­it struck me sharply that he must have grown thin and light for Neil to lift him so easily—­and put him on the couch.

“Whisht, your Ladyship, whisht!” he said to my grandmother.  “Fetch me a drop o’ water and a sponge, Miss Bawn.  The cut’s not a deep one.  There’s nothin’ wrong with his Lordship, and we needn’t frighten the life out o’ him, wirrasthruin’, when he comes back to himself.  Don’t tell any of the women, Miss Bawn.”

I got him the water as quickly and quietly as I could, and Neil washed the blood away.  The cut proved, indeed, not to be serious; but it seemed an age before my grandfather’s eyes opened and he looked from Neil’s face to my grandmother’s.

“Have I been ill?” he asked.

“Just a bit of a wakeness, your Lordship,” Neil said.  “But sure, you’re finely now.”

I did not dare come near, but waited out of sight, dreading the time when my grandfather should remember.  Presently I heard him ask for me.

“Is Bawn there?” he asked.  “Where are you, child?”

I came forward and Neil withdrew.  I heard the library door close behind him.

“Poor little Bawn!” my grandfather said tenderly, “poor little Bawn!  We must bear whatever there is to come together, we three.  God would not have this child sacrificed.  I see now what a coward I was.”