Mary," she said. "And whatever I believe or feel about Luke would not
stand in the eyes of the law, since I am only his mother and why should
I not believe in my son?"

"It is my quarrel with you and Lord St. Leger that you will act as
though you believed him guilty," my godmother said. "As for Bawn, Lady
St. Leger, you must let me tell her the story. It is time that she
should know it. Not now, but another time when it will not grieve you.
And you will let her come with me to Dublin?"

"If her grandfather consents, Mary. I have no doubt that he will consent
if you ask him. But Bawn will need some clothes if she is to see your
friends. What are we going to do about her clothes?"

"You must leave that to me, Lady St. Leger, as being Bawn's godmother.
If I have not done my duty by her hitherto, it does not mean that I
never shall."

After all, I did not hear Uncle Luke's story from my godmother but from
Maureen Kelly.

Maureen was now getting old, and she had a room allotted to herself at
the extreme end of the left wing which looked out on the gable of the
Abbey and the graves which are all that remain of the old Abbey from
which the house takes its name.

To be sure the grass grows up to the empty window-sockets of the gable;
and as for the graves they are clean blotted out in the prairie grass
that is like the grey waves of the sea above them.