"Who's that?" Tishy whispered, pressing nearer to Larry; but she was
agreeably certain that it was the gloomy and misanthropic Captain
Cloherty, whose place of refuge they had invaded.

Christian, meanwhile, unlike Captain Cloherty, was conscientiously
endeavouring to enjoy herself, and was finding that the wheels of the
chariot of pleasure drave heavily. That Barty Mangan was a good dancer
was an alleviation, but among those stigmatised by Eliza Hosford as
the riff-raff of Cluhir, those now forgotten measures of the first
years of this century, the prancing barn-dance, the capering
_pas-de-quatre_, lent themselves to a violence that, even at the
uncritical age of eighteen, Christian found overpowering. "They danced
like the Priests of Baal," she told Judith. "One expected to see them
cut themselves with knives!"

The information that the dog-cart had come for her was of the nature
of a release. Barty put her into it. The May moon shone on his pale
face as he looked up at Christian, and reverently took her hand in
farewell. She had begun to find his dark and humble devotion
oppressive; she liked him, which did not prevent her from thanking
heaven when he released her hand from a pressure that had lasted
longer than he knew. He stood on the gravel and watched the departing
dog-cart vanish, like a ghostly thing, into the elusive mist of
moonlight. The May moon, now sailing full overhead, looked with a
broad satisfaction on the hardest hit of her victims.




CHAPTER XIX