With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this story, as if it were something so infamous that his simple and innocent heart could scarcely credit it.

"If I really thought it was true," he said, "that a man living such a life could come here to marry my little ... But no, God could not suffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make sure. We live so far away in this little island that ... But I must go back now. The Bishop will be calling for me."

Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at the gate of our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering, with flowers from the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the joiner had hammered up the day before.

The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this prompted me to look up and speak to him.

"Tommy," I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't said a good word to me about my marriage?"

"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe that's because I've had so many bad ones to say to other people."

I asked which other people.

"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the 'Horse and Saddle.' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling me,' says Johnny. 'I won't say no,' I says. 'It'll be a proud day for the grand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of Castle Raa,'

says Johnny. 'Maybe so,' I says, 'but it'll be a prouder day for Castle Raa when she sets her clane little foot in it.'"

TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened since, to convey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and personal dishonour which was produced in me by Father Dan's account of the contents of Martin's letter. It was like opening a door out of a beautiful garden into a stagnant ditch.

That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt, first because Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all points with the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real conversation I had yet had with him.

Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friend Eastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would have married her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an allowance, he was marrying me in return for my father's money.

It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my father, the lawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it.

I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a young girl out of a convent, I did not know.

Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she had been alive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about her neck and my face in her breast, I should have told her all my trouble.

There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever expected to go to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings and after much hesitation I went.

It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my aunt as she passed through the house like a biting March wind, scolding everybody, until I found her in her own room.

She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking pale, I suppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and cried:

"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your morning walks, eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We must send for the doctor straight. We can't have _you_ laid up now, after all this trouble and expense."

"It isn't that, Auntie."

"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"

I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept looking at me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my aunt listened with amazement, and then she laughed outright.

"So _you've_ heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill," she said, with a thump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you."

I asked if she thought it wasn't true.

"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or isn't?

Young men will be young men, I suppose."

She went on with her ironing as she added:

"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked for that there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world, wouldn't there?"

I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to say:

"But if he is practically married to the other woman... ."

"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like that? You might as well talk about marriage in the hen coop."

"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie... ."

"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off and get rid of her before he marries you."

"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her iron and looked at me as if I had said something shameful.

"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. He shouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a barn-door rooster?"

My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my intended husband could not care for _me_, or he would have seen more of me.

"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about that."

I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him.

"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work miracles."

Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had been taught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the Almighty so that those who entered it might live together in union, peace and love, whereas ...

But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me with her hard lip curled, said:

"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me."

"But don't you think love is necessary?"

"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that nonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing.

"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron, "do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed!

'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income,' I said, 'and if I put my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he _is_ a taste in years,' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was one of the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? And where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt Bridget, bringing down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage, founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is the only proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, so for goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting every busybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your chance--I can tell you that much, my lady."

I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, and then,

"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I had to, and if... ."