impatient excuse and went out alone to recover her composure in the
farm-house garden.

The hours of the evening passed slowly.

There was a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse
themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of
Miss Henley and Mrs. Lewson. Even the maid, who had only seen him
during his last visit to London, said she wished to-morrow had come and
gone. His sweet temper, his handsome face, his lively talk had made
Arthur a favourite everywhere. Mrs. Lewson had left her comfortable
English home to be his housekeeper, when he tried his rash experiment
of farming in Ireland. And, more wonderful still, even wearisome Sir
Giles became an agreeable person in his nephew's company.

Iris set the example of retiring at an early hour to her room.

There was something terrible in the pastoral silence of the place. It
associated itself mysteriously with her fears for Arthur; it suggested
armed treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the
whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man
mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps----? Iris shrank from her own
horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the
window. As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on
horseback rode up to the house. Was it Arthur? No: the light-coloured
groom's livery that he wore was just visible.

Before he could dismount to knock at the door, a tall man walked up to
him out of the darkness.