ill find a
parcel in the cab at the door."

"Her Ladyship is always kind and good, the Lord reward her! I think I'll
be gettin' down to see her and the Abbey and Maureen before the winter
comes. And now, Miss Bawn, you'll be seein' the house?"

I felt that it would be the greatest unkindness to refuse her, so we
made the journey of all the forty-two rooms, and in every one Bridget
had stories to tell, and she pointed to the pictures and the bric-a-brac
and the tapestries, and classified the furniture, like any guide-book.

I was not as excited about them as otherwise I might have been. Indeed,
I could think of nothing but that Anthony Cardew was beside me, and that
he had clasped me in his arms and kissed me and that there was no
gentleman on earth his equal.

I knew now how foolish it was about Theobald, and how impossible it was
that our brotherly and sisterly intimacy could ever have ripened into
love. Indeed, I felt years older than Theobald, and I said to myself
that never in any circumstances could I have cared for a boy like him.
As we went from room to room my heart felt as though it were on wings.
To see Captain Cardew, how polite and kind he was to old Bridget,
opening and closing the shutters for her and helping her up and down
steps, filled me with pride and joy. Was it possible that he could care
for a little ignorant girl like me, this _preux chevalier_, who had been
secretly a hero of romance to me as long as I remembered?

All the time as we went Bridget talked incessantly, although she became
scanter and scanter of breath. She had all sorts of reminiscences of my
grandfather and grandmother and of the great days in the house; but I
noticed that once when she mentioned Uncle Luke's name she coughed to
cover her mistake, and looked oddly from Captain Cardew to me as though
she wondered at finding us together.

And then we were taken down to the drawing-room which opened on the
right-hand side of the hall; and she would take off the covers of the
old French furniture to show us the beautiful old chintzes with which
they were upholstered. Also she would have us admire the Italian
mantelpieces inlaid with coloured marble, and the decoration of the
walls and ceilings which were very fine indeed, and the picture by
Angelica Kauffmann of the Lady St. Leger of that day as St. Cecilia
playing on her organ, and the other beautiful things which the rooms
contained. All the time she sighed over the years durin