It was something I could never tell to anybody, and I felt as though I
must carry some shameful secret all my days and that it must appear in
my face, and I was glad that I need not meet the eyes of my grandparents
by daylight, but could deceive their dear, dim sight in the shaded
candle-light and afterwards have the night to recover myself.
With a young girl's extremity of virginal pride and modesty, I hated
even myself because he had touched me and could have disfigured the face
he had praised.
But the red sun glinting down the long arcades, promising another fine
day to-morrow, gave my thoughts a welcome turn. I remembered how it had
shone yesterday in the long line of windows at Brosna; and that led me
to think of Anthony Cardew.
He had the most romantic stories attaching to him, such stories as were
sure to please a young girl's fancy. It was to be sure not a name we
mentioned at Aghadoe. Indeed, even before I knew about Uncle Luke there
was something that forbade my talking of the Cardews before Lord and
Lady St. Leger or before my godmother.
Only old Maureen, who so often mixed up the present and the past, would
talk of the Cardews as though their name had never been banned, as
though they still came and went as friends and intimates at Aghadoe
Abbey as in the days before the trouble came about Uncle Luke.
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