When her sister sought her upstairs, and asked in a quiet, firm way, "What is the matter, Paddy? Something has happened to you," she only hesitated a second, and then replied with as much calmness as she could muster:

"Yes, Eily, I'm in rather a difficulty. I was going to ask you and Jack to help me."

"Paddy, we will do anything--anything," Eileen cried earnestly.

"I know you will, but it isn't much I want--only that I am going back to London to-night, and I want you to help me manage it without any more questions and explanations than can possibly be helped."

At first, Eileen was dumbfounded and greatly distressed, but Paddy was evidently desperately in earnest and meant to go.

"Don't ask me anything, Eily, if you really want to help," she said wearily. "Just break it to mother and the aunties a little while before I start and help to arrange some excuse for me to any others who ask questions."

In the end it was all managed so, and Jack prepared to go to Greenore with her and see her safely on the boat for Holyhead, from whence she would go straight back to her uncle's.

At the last moment Aunt Jane stole softly into her bedroom--Aunt Jane, whose heart had always leaned to Paddy, just as Aunt Mary's had leaned to Eileen.

"My child," she said very tenderly, "I can see that you are in some great trouble, and I shall not know how to keep from fretting about you, because you have always been as my own child to me, and I would rather suffer myself than see you suffer. Only we may not choose who shall be glad and who sad, and no doubt if we could, things would only be worse in the end. But you won't forget your 'old maid' auntie by the loch, darling, whose heart will ache silently, thinking of you day and night."

The tears gushed from Paddy's eyes, and for a moment she seemed about to break down altogether, but in a few minutes she had managed to pull herself together again.

"Are you sure you must go away alone like this?" Aunt Jane asked yearningly.

"Yes, auntie, quite sure. I love you so much for coming to me now, but you mustn't make me break down. Please help me to keep up, auntie, just until I get away."

And Miss Jane did--having her own cry out later by herself--while the steamer started into the black, wintry night, and Jack stood watching it from Greenore pier, with a mist before his eyes and a queer huskiness in his throat. Just when life was opening for him with all its sweetest and best, it seemed hard, indeed, that Paddy--his old chum and playmate--should be a.s.sailed with this trouble of which she would not speak, and in which apparently none of them could help her. Jack cared just as much as his present happiness made it possible for him to care about anything. Long ago, though he only remembered it with a smile, the sole problem of his life had been which of the sisters he loved the best. Fate had tipped the balance to the elder's side, without in any measure depreciating the other; but Jack never knew, and never would know, what a difference that final choice had made to Paddy.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE.

A MAN'S PAIN.

Lawrence received his first intimation of what had happened through Gwen; as Paddy had foreseen.

He had been sitting most of the morning in his den, with the London newspapers, the lovers having all taken themselves off, with an air that forbade any one to follow on their peril, but he had not done much reading. Small wonder, indeed! Why read of stocks and shares, of wars and rumours of Wars, of the vagaries of Cabinet Ministers, and the sweet, childlike levity of Irish members--when the happiness for which your whole life seems to have been waiting is coming to you to-day?

No, Lawrence did not read, he sat instead, gazing into the fire, making delightful plans for the future, in which Paddy was all in all. The chair she had sat in was pulled up to the hearth, but he had not used it since; he felt it was her chair now, and his fancy loved to see her sitting there still, with her two little hands clasping the two arms, and her head leaning back with that slight air of weariness which somehow made her only the more enchanting.

He was strangely happy that one morning, there had never been anything in all his life before in the least like it. In the afternoon he meant to go and look for her by the loch; he believed she would be waiting for him--and if not, well he would go to the Parsonage and claim her.

He went over the interview in his fancy, detail by detail, as it might be, as he would like it to be.

Paddy would be shy, that was a delicious thought to him. He had known too many of the women who meet a man half-way without the slightest qualm, and practically thrust his first kiss upon him, thinking of it only as one of many to follow. How different it would be with Paddy!

He even wondered, with a little inward smile, whether she would let him kiss her at all this first interview, or at any rate before they were just parting. He did not mean to press her or hurry her in any way.

Once having her promise, he could afford to wait.

Still it was deliriously sweet to think of, and he sat forward with his arms across his knees picturing the sacred moment. He thought how he would coax her, and how she would yield gradually, and then he would fold her in his arms and hold her tight against his heart while their lips met.

He was roused by a step coming along the pa.s.sage to his door, a hurried step, that had a suggestion of being agitated in some way. Then the door opened, and Gwen put her head in to see if he was there. Finding he was, she came in and shut the door quietly behind her, and something in the quiet of her usually radiant face was ominous.

"What has happened between you and Paddy, Lawrence?" she asked, coming close up to him. "I thought everything was all right; that it was practically settled." He clenched his hands suddenly.

"It is. Why?"

Gwen looked at him, and a wave of painful feeling pa.s.sed over her face.

"She has run away," she said; "she went back to London alone last night."

Instantly, as in a flash, he understood. He did not speak, he did not utter a sound, but sat there in a silence that became terrible, his hands clenched and his mouth rigid. Gwen gave a little shiver.

At last to break the awful tension she continued:

"We called to see her this morning--Bob and I, and they told us she had crossed last night. They told us some sort of a tale about her uncle wanting her, but of course I didn't believe it. I just pretended to, and then came back here feeling as if I'd had a shock."

Still he did not speak nor move, only staring with that fixed gaze into vacancy. If there was any difference at all, he was grinding his teeth together, to hold in check some inner tumult, rising momentarily higher.

Gwen grew a little frightened. She had never seen him like this, never seen any man, in the first deadly throes of an anguish that was as life and death to him.

"What are you going to do, Lawrie?" she said. "Perhaps, she has not really run away from you."

Still no word or sign.

She put her hand on his shoulder to rouse him.

"What are you going to do, Lawrie?" she asked again.

"Go to the devil!" in a low, bitter voice of unmistakable meaning, and without raising his eyes.

She slipped down on her knees beside him and clasped her hands round his arm.

"Don't, Lawrie--don't," she prayed, all her long affection for him crystallising, and grasping just all that his bitter words might mean.

"I can't bear you to take it like this. Oh! it is terrible, and just when I am so happy. I will go to Paddy, she will listen to me--I will make her see things differently. Lawrie, don't look like that--she shall be yours, I promise you she shall. You shall have your happiness."

But he only shook her off roughly.

"Leave me alone. You! you have got your happiness, what do you know about mine?"

It was the first time in her life that he had spoken roughly to her, and Gwen shrank back almost as if she had been struck.

"You can't--you can't--mean to speak to me like that, Lawrie--"

"I think you had better go away," was all he said. "I might do you an injury."

For a moment she was transfixed, then she rose to her feet, and turned slowly to the door. Here she paused a moment.

"I will tell them you are not well, and do not want any lunch," she said. "Later on I will come back."

After lunch Mrs Blake rose quickly from the table, and went toward the door. Gwen was immediately in a fever of anxiety. What should she do?

In desperation she put a detaining hand upon the mother's arm:

"You--you--are not going to Lawrence?" she stammered.