"What are you going to do?" I asked again.
"Find consolation where I can. There are some ready to offer it, Bawn."
He closed the door, and I heard him telling the chauffeur to drive me to
Aghadoe. I put my head out to see the last of him as we drove away, and
he was standing in the darkness still looking after me.
My thoughts were in a whirl of confusion. At first I could think of
nothing except that Richard Dawson himself had set me free and that his
manner showed it was irrevocable. But I could not look beyond that to my
Anthony's return, because how was I to tell the old people who looked to
me for deliverance that I had failed them? I knew something of Garret
Dawson, and that he had never in all his life been known to show mercy.
His old granite face with the tight mouth and beetling eyebrows was
enough. I quailed in the darkness as a vision of his face rose before
me. I had no doubt that, as soon as he knew I was not going to marry his
son, he would do his worst. He had been known, people said, to sacrifice
business advantages even to obtain revenge.
At the thought of that I stretched out my arms as though I would take
the two helpless old heads to my bosom to shelter them from the storm.
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