sometimes I am
lonely--very!"

And in truth it is a very wistful face that watches pretty Belle
hurrying down the avenue. Honor has grown very thin and pale of late,
and to-night, in her white gown, she looks thinner and paler than ever.
She is feeling the need of a friend sorely. Often Brian Beresford's
words come back--"If ever you should want me, either as friend or
lover, send for me, and I will come."

She wants him now--his friendship, she feels, would be a stay and
shield for her--but she never dreams of taking him at his word, and
asking him to come back to Donaghmore.

She is feeling unusually depressed as she looks out at the sky, which
is slowly changing from pink and opal to a sullen gray.

A morbid dread has been upon her all the day, and the sighing of the
wind in the pine-trees--for a storm is rising over a neighboring
mountain--does not tend to make her more cheerful. She stands a little
while watching the grass bending before the breeze and the dead leaves
swirling and eddying round on the smooth-cropped lawn.

"The rain will be coming down before Aileen could get half-way home,"
she says to herself, and straightway goes down to the kitchen to forbid
her old nurse's departure.

The old woman is sitting before the fire, her head slightly turned, as
if she were listening.

At the sound of Honor's step on the tiled floor she springs upright.

"How ye startled me, honey! Shure in that soft white gown ye might pass
for one of the blessed saints themselves. I took ye for a spirit--I did
an' troth, Miss Honor, at the first glance."

She seems unusually tired and excited, but she will not hear of staying
for the night at Donaghmore.

"Is it a tough old woman like me to be afeard of a sough of wind or a
few drops of rain? No, no, my lamb! I'll go home this night, the saints
being willin'!"

It is almost dark in the front hall as the girl passes through; only a
faint gray light comes in at the open door.

In the drawing-room the windows stand open just as she left them; and,
wondering a little at the old butler's carelessness, she proceeds to
fasten them herself.

As she does so she sees a man cross the drive quickly from the
servants' quarters at the back of the house. He is followed after a
brief space of time by another man, and both disappear in the direction
of the gates.

"I did not know they had visitors in the kitchen to-night," she says to
herself, and straightway forgets all about it.