own funeral."

The old man smiles, but he says no more; and Honor feels that the appearance of this phantom has cast a gloom over the house that was scarcely needed.

"And Launce ought to have had more sense than to talk to the pater about it," she says to herself, as she watches the squire's anxious face. "He ought to have remembered that the last time that horrid old abbot was seen about poor grandpapa was shot; and of course everybody said the abbot had come to warn him."

CHAPTER V.

After that night no more is seen or heard of the old abbot.

"Wait till the moonlight nights are past, and he'll turn up again,"
Launce says in his scoffing way.

But the nights are dark enough now—it is an almost sunless September, and yet they see nothing of the figure. To Honor has come an additional trouble—the engagement between her brother and Belle Delorme is broken off. Poor little Belle goes about like a ghost; her miserable eyes, which go so far to contradict the smile on her lips, fairly haunt Honor.

"If Launce ever loved her he could not bear to see her looking like that!" the girl says, in her angry surprise that he, her favorite brother, should prove so cruel. But Launce just now has eyes for no one but Kate Dundas.

The widow is more fascinating than ever. Two gentlemen are staying on a visit with her, one from London and one—who is eyed with suspicious disfavor by her poorer neighbors—from Dublin Castle itself.

There are dinners or card-parties almost every night, and, to use a vulgar expression, Launce Blake is never off the doorstep.

People are beginning to say that he will marry her and snap his fingers at the old squire, who, for some reason best known to himself, is no admirer of the brilliant widow.

"It's the greatest pity in the world that you couldn't keep your temper!" Honor says reproachfully to her friend, when she comes to tell her that the engagement is at an end. "I always told you Launce would not stand being found fault with; sure a child could lead him."

"Yes," Belle answers bitterly, "such a child as Kate Dundas! I knew from the first how it would end, dear. The woman means to marry him, and she will do it."

Honor sighs. It is dreadful to think of handsome Launce, with his brilliant prospects, being sacrificed to this woman, ten years older than he is, and the widow of a very "shady" major of dragoons.

"It is not as if he loved her!" says Belle, almost with a sob. "He does not love her. It's all a 'bewitchment,' as old Aileen would say; and, when she has got him, he'll be miserable."

"But we mustn't let her get him, dear; we must stop it, you and I."

"Then I'm sure I don't see how we are to manage it," Belle sighs.

Neither does Honor, but she is not going to admit that.

Twilight is setting in when Belle gets up to go home.

"Oh, dear, why have I stayed so long?" she says, with a little nervous sigh. "It will be almost dark before I get out on the road."

"And what about me here alone all the day—and I shall be alone for hours yet! The pater has gone down to the Low Acres, and the boys are shooting Colonel Frenche's covers. They can't be home till dark."

"I don't know how you live, and that's the truth, Honor. We often say so at home. I should go mad, I know I should."

"Oh, I don't feel like that in the least; but 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.

More than an hour passes before she hears her father's step in the hall.

"Where are the boys?" he says, as she comes out of the drawing-room to speak to him.

"They have not come from the colonel's yet. They said they might be late."

"A man has been shot on Keif Moss—shot dead, and by mistake for some one else, they tell me."

She reads the fear that is blanching the strong man's face, and making his voice sound low and husky in the empty hall.

"Not Launce, father! Don't tell me that it is Launce!"

"Heaven only knows! It was some one who was coming from that hateful Rose Mount; and, let Launce go east or west, he ends there before the day is out."

She knows it is too true; and suddenly her composure gives way, her strength with it, and, throwing her arms about her father's neck, she bursts into tears.

Very drearily the hours pass to the old man and the girl waiting and listening in the large lonely house.

It is twelve o'clock before Horace comes home. He has seen nothing of his brother since they met for lunch at the colonel's. He would ride off then and there to make inquiries if his father would let him; but the squire will not hear of such a thing. He sends them to their own rooms, and sees to the fastening of doors and windows—a thing Honor has never known him to do in all his life before—and then he sits down in the large empty dining-room—the scene of many a jovial feast—to wait for the morning light, and