As the word was spoken, Clodagh swayed a little. The black cloud of vague liabilities that hangs over so many Irish houses had suddenly descended upon her. And in the consequent shock, it seemed that the ground rocked under her feet. After a moment she steadied herself.

"Must the place go?" she asked in an intensely quiet voice.

"Yes. At least----"

"What?"

"It would have had to go, only----"

"Only for what?" In her keen anxiety Clodagh stooped forward and laid her hand on her aunt's shoulder. "Only for what, Aunt Fan?"

Shaken and unnerved at the interrogation, Mrs. a.s.shlin sat up with a start.

"Why do you do that, Clodagh?" she cried--"why do you do that? You gave me a palpitation of the heart."

But Clodagh's eyes still burned with inquiry.

"Why won't the place have to go?" she demanded. "How will the debts be paid?"

Mrs. a.s.shlin freed herself nervously from her niece's hand.

"Mr. Milbanke will pay them," she said impulsively; then instantly she checked herself. "Oh! what have I said?" she exclaimed. "Don't pretend that I told you, Clodagh. He is so particular that you shouldn't know."

But Clodagh scarcely heard. Her hand had dropped to her side, and she stood staring blankly at her aunt.

"You mean to say that he's going to pay father's debts--our debts?"

"Yes. He even wants to put the place into good repair. Poor Denis seems to have cast a perfect spell over him."

"Then we'll owe him something we can never possibly repay!"

Mrs. a.s.shlin drew herself up.

"Not exactly owe," she corrected. "It is an--an act of friendship. The a.s.shlins have never been indebted to any one for a favour. Of course Mr. Milbanke is a wealthy man; and it's easy to be generous when you have money----"

She heaved a sigh.

But Clodagh stood staring vacantly at the opposite wall.

"It's a debt all the same," she said, after a long pause. "I suppose it is what father used to call a debt of honour."

She spoke in a slow, mechanical voice; then, as if moved to action by her train of thought, she turned without waiting for her aunt's comment, and walked out of the room.

Traversing the corridor, she descended the stairs and pa.s.sed straight to the hall door. Once in the open, she wheeled to the right with a steady deliberate movement and began slowly to retrace the steps she had taken nearly half an hour earlier.

Steadily and unemotionally she went forward, skirting the courtyard, until, at the dip of the path, the glen came into view, and with it Milbanke's precise, black figure, standing exactly as she had seen it last.

The fact caused her no surprise. That he should still be there seemed the natural--the antic.i.p.ated thing; and without any pause--any moment of hesitation or delay--she moved directly towards him.

As she reached his side, her cheeks were hot, her heart was still beating unevenly; and, absorbed by her own emotion, she failed to see the dejected droop of his shoulders, the slight, pathetic suggestion of age in his bent back.

Her footsteps were scarcely audible on the damp earth, and she was close beside him before he became conscious of her presence; as he did so, however, he started violently, and the blood rushed incontinently over his forehead and cheeks.

"Clodagh!" he stammered.

But Clodagh checked him, laying her hand quickly on his arm.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said hurriedly, "will you forgive me for what I said? I want to take it back. I want to say that, if you still like, I--I will marry you."

CHAPTER VII

And thus it came about that Clodagh a.s.shlin entered upon a new phase of that precarious condition that we call life. The impulse that had induced her to accept Milbanke's proposal was in no way complex. The knowledge had suddenly been conveyed to her that, through no act of her own, she had been placed under a deep obligation; and her primary--her inherited--instinct had been to pay her debt as speedily and as fully as lay within her power, ignoring, in her lack of worldly wisdom, the fact that such a bargain must of necessity possess obligations other than personal, which would demand subsequent settlement.

However unversed she may be in the world's ways, it is scarcely to be supposed that any young girl, under normal conditions, can look upon her own marriage as an abstract thing. But the circ.u.mstances of Clodagh's case were essentially abnormal. Milbanke's proposal--and the facts that brought her to accept it--came at a time when her mind and her emotions were numbed by her first poignant encounter with death and grief; and for the time being her outlook upon existence was clouded.

The present seemed something sombre, desolate, and impalpable; the future something absolutely void.

For two days after the scene in the glen, she and Milbanke avoided all allusion to what had taken place between them. He appeared possessed by an insurmountable nervous reticence; while she, immersed in her trouble, seemed almost to have forgotten what had occurred.

On the evening of the third day, however, the subject was again broached.

Milbanke was sitting by one of the long, dining-room windows, reading by the faint twilight that filtered in from the fast-darkening sky. The light in the room was fitful; for though the table was already laid for dinner, the candles had not yet been lighted.

With his book held close to his eyes, he had been reading studiously for close upon an hour, when the quick opening of the door behind him caused him to look round. As he did so, he closed his book somewhat hastily and rose with a slight gesture of embarra.s.sment, for the disturber of his peace was Clodagh. But it was not so much the fact of her entry that had startled him, as the fact that, for the first time since her father's death, she was arrayed in her riding-habit.

Shaken out of his calm, he turned to her at once.

"Are you--are you going for a ride?" he asked in unconcealed surprise.

Clodagh nodded. She was drawing on her thick chamois gloves, and her riding-crop was held under her arm. Had the light in the room been stronger, he would have seen that her lips were firmly set and her eyes bright with resolution. But his mind was absorbed by his surprise.

"But is it not rather--late?" he hazarded anxiously, with a glance towards the window.

She looked up astonished.

"Late?" she repeated incredulously.

Then the look of faintly contemptuous tolerance that sometimes touched her with regard to him pa.s.sed over her face.

"Oh no; not at all!" she explained. "I'm used to riding in the evening.

You see, Polly must be exercised; and I'd rather it was dark, the first time I rode after----"

Her voice faltered.

Milbanke heard the tremor, and, as once before, his sense of personal timidity fled before his spontaneous pity.