The Story of Bawn | Page 8

the colour in my cheeks
which must make me conspicuous to those who were looking at me. I
heard a little giggle; then the voice of one of the ladies very slightly
subdued--
"Oh, come away, Dick. Don't you see how you are making that poor
girl blush?"
To my relief I heard them go, but it was some time before I could
recover myself.
I had no idea at all but that they were chance visitors brought into the
neighbourhood by the light railway, but I was soon to be disillusioned.
Several times that day I caught the eyes of a very pretty and
innocent-looking girl, named Nora Brady, fixed on me, and there was
something odd about her look; so much so that later in the day, as I was
putting on my hat to go home, while Nora was preparing to start
without any such formality, I suddenly asked her--
"Why have you been looking at me now and again to-day as though
you were going to say something to me?"

To my amazement she blushed hotly and stammered something about
not having known that she was looking at me.
"Never mind, Nora," I said, pitying her confusion; "a cat may look at a
king, you know. Not that I'm a king nor a queen either."
"Oh, indeed, Miss Bawn," she said, blushing again. "You're pretty
enough to be the Queen. Sure that's why poor Master Richard stared at
you, not meaning to be impudent at all, let alone that he thought you a
poor girl."
"Master Richard?"
"Master Richard Dawson. 'Twas him came in to-day with some of the
quality ladies they have stopping at Damerstown. He didn't mean any
harm, Miss Bawn."
So it was Richard Dawson, the only son of the rich money-lender, on
whom we of the older, more exclusive gentry turn our backs. He had
been wild in his boyhood, and had quarrelled with his father and flung
himself off to America. We had not heard of his return.
I noticed half consciously the pleading look of Nora's blue eyes under
their black lashes. Why was the child so much concerned at what had
offended me? But I hardly thought of her.
I was thinking with an unreasonable wave of repulsion that I should
doubtless meet Richard Dawson, if not in the drawing-rooms of our
friends at least about our quiet lanes and roads, where hitherto there had
been nothing to fear. I wished he had stayed in America; and on one
subject I made up my mind. That was that if I must meet Richard
Dawson I should certainly be as cold to him as was compatible with
civility to those in whose houses I might meet him.
For we were not all a century behind our times. Some of us had a
Dublin season every year and had been presented at Court, and some of
us even went to London for the season.

Lady Ardaragh was one of those. She used to quiz us openly for our
old-fashioned ways, but so sweetly that even my grandmother laughed
with her. And she used to say that if one were too particular about one's
visiting-list so as to exclude the newly rich people, one would have to
mark off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would
have us believe lay all about it. One met the oddest people in her
drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little
butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked himself away
among his books.
"If I hadn't such oddities I should bore myself to extinction, dear Lady
St. Leger," she said to my grandmother once. "Arthur will keep me here
nine months of the year. What is one to do?"
"Why, I am sure there is plenty to do," my grandmother replied simply.
"Bawn is busy from morning to night, what with her garden and her
birds and her dogs and her reading and music, and now with the
Creamery. So should I be if Lord St. Leger did not claim so much of
my attention. I neglect things sadly nowadays because my husband
leans on me as a staff, although I am nearly as old as he. And there is
your dear boy."
Lady Ardaragh frowned.
"Sir Arthur never knows how I look, what I put on," she said. "He was
an ardent lover enough, but now I do not think I could provoke him if I
tried. He simply does not think of me. An illuminated manuscript is
more to him than I am; and he would rather have a black-letter book
than my youth. As for my Robin, I adore him; but his fine nurse comes
between him and me. And to be sure, even if she didn't