"I should be lost without Jack and Kate to look after me," smiled Johnnie.
"And they would be lost without you," said Father Healey.
"Here is Kate, a dear child I have known from her birth, with a mind and heart as innocent now as the day I baptised her, and showing you, I am well aware, a devotion that could not be equalled by the highest in the land. It would be a terrible thing if such devotion were ever to be cast aside as worthless, and an innocent heart betrayed."
"What the devil does he mean?" thought Johnnie, but he shook hands with the priest, and assured him that neither Jack nor his sister should ever want for anything while he was living in Clonmere.
"I believe you," said Father Healey, opening a vast umbrella to shield his stout person from the rain.
"You have given proof of your honour and generosity to me in person, and this blessed child, with no parents living and only her brother to care for her, trusts herself in your hands."
And leaving the gate-house, he turned down the hill towards the village.
"Ah, he's a great saint, the reverend father," said Jack Donovan, glancing at his sister, "and has a tenderness for Kate. He'd die rather than see her wronged, just as I would myself. I tell you, Captain, if I ever saw my sister shamed I'd strangle her with my two hands. And you know that, don't you, Kate?"
"Yes, Jack," said his sister softly, looking meekly at the work on her lap.
"There's some gentlemen, Captain, believe it or not," said Jack Donovan fiercely, "who would seize advantage of a young woman's innocence and make game of her when her brother's back was turned, and the poor creature herself as ignorant as the babe unborn. Why, it's disgusting."
Johnnie shrugged his shoulders, and finished his glass of whisky. Surely Jack was not going to feign ignorance at this late hour of ail-that had taken place under his roof during the past months? As for his sister's innocence, anyone less innocent than Kate the second day she had put her hair down in the kitchen would be hard to find.
"You had better come down to the castle in the morning, Jack," he said briefly, rising to his feet. "Phillips has brought me in a bill for meal and cattle feed I can't make head or tail of."
"Won't you stay for a bite of cupper, Captain?"
"No, I don't think so. Goodnight, Kate."
He arrived home to find a letter from Katherine, reproaching him for his neglect of East Grove for so many weeks. She had hoped so much, she said, that he would have paid them a visit at the New Year, and he had never done so. His goddaughter Molly was flourishing, and Henry very proud of her, and as Johnnie would not come to see them she proposed that they should visit Johnnie. If Henry brought his gun next Saturday would there be any woodcock left, and any hares on Doon Island? Her brother, Bill Eyre, was with them, and would come too.
The letter put Johnnie in a fever of unrest.
The house was disreputable. No comfort for Katherine; she would be cold and miserable, she could never stand the place for a day. Yet how dear to see her again, to have her sitting in his drawing-room, if only for a couple of hours.
During the few days before Saturday came he threw himself with a fury of energy into the business of getting the house into shape. Servants were cursed, dismissed, and taken into service again, all within the hour. He walked round the grounds with his keeper, arranging the shoot. He even sent out invitations to his godfather, Doctor Armstrong, and one or two other people in the district, to make more sport for Henry.
"I'll let them know," he said to himself, "that I can put on as good a show as my grandfather ever did."
The morning of the great day was crisp and fine, and Johnnie, up earlier than he had been for several weeks, walked down to the creek and looked across at the snow-tipped crest of Hungry Hill. The sun shone into the windows of Clonmere, the doors were opened wide, and the dining-room table, laid for cold luncheon, looked clean and inviting, for the first time in months.
The old pride in his home, that he had known as a small boy when he had coveted Clonmere from his grandfather, returned once more He would show Katherine that he was not utterly despicable, that he was master of his house and of himself, and she would understand why he wished his home to shine for her this day. He went inside to give a last-minute direction to his servant, and was told that Mr. Donovan was waiting to see him in the library. He frowned; he had hinted to Jack a few days previously that he would be obliged if his agent and his sister made themselves scarce while his brother and sister-in-law were staying. Henry did not care for Jack Donovan, and Henry, being his guest, must be deferred to for the period of the visit.
"What is it, Jack?" he said. "Is anything wrong?"
The agent's face was very solemn. His ginger hair was plastered down with grease, and he was wearing his Sunday clothes.
"Kate's very low, Captain," he said gravely. "She's wondering whether you can slip up to the gate-house and see her?"
"Of course I can't," said Johnnie irritably. "You know I have Mr. Henry and his wife coming, and several other people. I shan't be coming to the gate-house until they have all gone. My brother may be here for several days."
Jack Donovan's face became gloomier still.
"She'll take it very bad, sir," he said.
"In fact, I don't know what to do with her, and that's the plain truth of the matter. Not a wink of sleep last night for the pair of us. And she crying and taking on so, 1 thought I should have to send for Doctor Armstrong. I am glad I did not, with him coming here to shoot today."
"What the devil's the matter, then?" said Johnnie, glancing impatiently at the clock.
"The party will be here any minute."
Jack Donovan coughed, and ran his cap along the edge of the table.
"Women take such fancies into their heads at these times, Captain," he said. "Say what I would, she wouldn't listen to me. "I'll destroy myself," says she. "I'll throw myself into the creek, if he turns his back on me now."
"You be quiet, Kate," says I. "The Captain is too good a friend to treat you, a respectable young woman, like he might a poor creature of the streets. He'll see you righted, depend upon it, before the mischief is spread abroad to cause a scandal through the country by which he could not hold his head up before the gentry."?
Johnnie banged his fist down on the desk.
"Look here, Jack," he said. "What in the name of God are you driving at, and what's suddenly come over Kate to behave in such an astounding fashion?"
"Why, sir," said his agent, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, "you surely know Kate is in a certain condition, and has been like it, she tells me, these past two months?"
Johnnie stared at his agent heavily, his mind in a turmoil.
"This is the first I've heard of it," he said.
Jack Donovan went on rubbing his cap along the desk.
"The poor creature is that distraught she scarcely knows what she's about," he said. "The reverend father is with her now, praying beside her. It's my belief she'll have no comfort, though, until she's seen you."
"I can't see her, it's impossible," said Johnnie excitedly, pacing up and down the room.
"Surely you can explain the position; she knows perfectly well that my brother and his wife are expected. Is she sure of her facts? How does she know about this-this damned business?"
"Sure, her old auntie down in Doonhaven told her it was certain. I tell you, Captain, it's enough to break a man's heart. Here's this young woman, my sister, given herself to you without thought of the consequences, and likely to kill herself unless we can find an honour" able end to it all."
There was a sound of wheels upon the drive, and Johnnie, glancing out of the window, saw his brother's carriage drive up to the door.