Only an Irish Girl by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (online e reader txt) 📖

at her curiously.

"Have you seen anything to startle you, Miss Honor?" he says at last.

"No; I have seen nothing. Why do you ask?" Not for worlds would she own to any one the ghostly fears that shook her out there in the dusky avenue, with the sound of those following steps in her ears.

"Well," adds the butler, "one of the girls has just come in, miss, in a state of great fright, and says that she saw the old abbot himself at the corner of the avenue, watching the house for all the world as if it held some treasure of his own."

"Nonsense!" Honor says, turning suddenly pale, even in the lighted hall. "I hope these silly tales are not going to begin again. Your master will be very displeased if they come to his ears."

As she enters the sitting-room she sees that her father is not alone.

A tall man is standing on the rug before the fire, talking with much animation. It is Brian Beresford.

"I have taken the liberty of invading you without even an invitation," he says, coming forward with outstretched hand.

"And you are welcome," the girl answers softly. "Besides, your last invasion was so well timed, we may well forgive this one."

"Ah," he says, smiling gravely, "that was a rough sort of invasion! I hope I shall never have to attack Donaghmore in that fashion again."

"I hope not indeed!" Honor agrees promptly. "I don't think I could live through another night like that."

"Oh, yes, you could--through a dozen such, if necessary. I quite admired your bravery. I never saw a young lady so cool under fire before."

She blushes as she listens; her heart thrills with a half-reluctant pride at his praise.

"What has come to me," she says to herself crossly, "that I can't look at the man without blushing? It's time I had more sense."

"I have come to stay a day or two," he tells them.

A week passes, however, and he does not go away. To Honor it is a week of very mixed sensations. She has never before known any one like this stolid Englishman, who under all his composure hides a passion so fiery, a will so strong.

On his part he is very grave and gentle. Not once does a word of love pass his lips; and she is glad of it, for she is in no mood to think of love or lovers.

"It would be horrible to think of such things," she tells herself, "while poor Power Magill is wandering in homeless misery."

She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight, lying chill and white on the grass and the bare flower-beds.

"Where is he now?" she asks herself with a shivering sigh, as she listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question she is asking continually; but who can answer it?

He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some dark gorge in the mountains.

From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one is coming slowly toward the house--a girl, little more than a child, with an old cloak flung over her head--country fashion. Honor watches her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to pass the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.

The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a letter--not a bulky letter, a mere scrap, closely twisted; and, without a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.

"Who has sent it, Nora?"--for she recognizes the child now that she sees her face.

But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, passing over the moonlit grass like the mere shadow of a girl.

The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for their guest.

There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:

"Will you venture to the old ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M."

As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.

"How he must have suffered," she says to herself, "to have changed like this!" Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted! There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.

As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale scrap of paper.

His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.


CHAPTER IX.

Never has time passed so slowly to Honor Blake. All the morning she goes about her work with a listless preoccupied air that could not fail to attract attention if there were any one to heed the girl or her moods.

Perhaps Brian Beresford heeds them; but Honor never gives a thought to him. She would be glad if he would go away and leave her to herself; but since he makes no such offer, she puts up with him.

And now, in the late afternoon, she sits down at the piano, more to pass the time than to amuse their guest. In truth, as she plays she forgets him altogether. The music, now low and sweet, now wild and martial, soothes her and brings back some of her lost nerve.

Brian Beresford, looking and listening, frowns, and then sighs. She is an enigma to him, this stately, contradictory Irish girl, with her moods and her prejudices, and, above all, her reserve. He has met no one quite like her. The women of his world are of a totally different type--he can understand them easily; but Honor he cannot understand.

He feels his heart soften as he looks at her. He is proud, and it has jarred upon his pride terribly that a man like Power Magill should have been preferred to him.

"And the chances are, now the fellow is in disgrace, she will cling to him all the closer," he says to himself bitterly. He does not care to own it, but in his heart he is savagely jealous of Power Magill.

Very softly is Honor playing now--a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every breath a torture to her.

"What if he should be taken to-night?" she is saying to herself. "How do we know that that child is to be trusted? How dare he trust any one when there is such a heavy reward out for him--poor Power?"

The tears come into her eyes as she thinks of him. It grows more bitter to her every moment, the thought of this meeting that is so close at hand now.

"Honor," Brian says gently, "will you not let me help you? You are in some trouble, I know." He has crossed the room and is standing beside her. "You can trust me, surely?"

"I could trust you with my life; but this secret is not my own."

"I know it is not; nevertheless you might trust it to me."

She raises her head and looks at him, and something in his face brings the color into her own. He is very brave and true, a safe shelter in trouble--she has proved that--and her heart yearns for the help he could give her. But it may not be. His sympathies are all on the side of law and order, and she has ranged herself, for this one night at least, among the opposite ranks.

"Don't think me curious, Honor," he says earnestly; "but I am sure you are in need of a friend's help, and I would like you to let me give it."

"No one can help me--not even you," she answers gently, getting up and looking at him with those troubled eyes that move him so strangely.

"And yet you are so good to me always that I should like to tell you my trouble if I might. But it is better not, perhaps."

"Let me say one thing, Honor. If this trouble of yours is connected with Power Magill--and I believe it is--you will not forget that he is a dangerous man, a man not to be trusted."

"I will not forget," she answers with a shiver, as she thinks of the meeting that is drawing nigh so rapidly.

The sun has set, and a cold mist is rising. It is very peaceful but rather dreary outside; and inside, in the familiar pretty room, the shadows are gathering.

Brian Beresford draws a step nearer. He had not meant to say one word of love to her--this willful girl who makes so light of him and his devotion; but, standing so close beside her in this tender gray twilight, impulse masters his judgment.

"Honor, has my love no power to touch you? Must this man forever stand between us even in his----" He is going to say disgrace, but the piteous look on the girl's face stays him.

"Oh, Brian, don't talk to me of love now--I cannot bear it!"

It is the first time she has ever called him Brian, and in her face, as she turns it from him, crimson from brow to chin, in her very attitude, as she stands with clasped hands before him, there is some subtle change that chills him.

"Then promise me that when times are brighter and you are happier you will listen to me, Honor."

"Perhaps," she stammers; and then, with tears in her eyes: "Oh, how cruel I am! I'm not worth loving!" And she is gone before he can say another word.

For so stoical a man, Brian Beresford is strangely excited to-night. Long after Honor has left him he walks up and down the darkening room, and, when the old butler comes in to light the lamps, he goes out on to the terrace and continues his measured tramp to and fro, smoking and thinking, and watching he scarcely knows for what.

Ever since he saw Honor hide away that scrap of paper in her dress he has been tormented with jealous fears.

"If the fellow were once out of the country I should feel all right," he tells himself. But the fellow is not out of the country--nay, may be in the immediate neighborhood for all he can tell, and in consequence he is racked with anxiety.

From the terrace he can see the ruins clearly at first; then the mist partly blots them out, and presently he can only guess at their position. But he has no interest in the ruins. He is not in the least superstitious; and certainly he does not believe in the old abbot.

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