The Story of Bawn
oughts for a moment from the painful memory of Richard Dawson's rudenes
and that it must appear in my face, and I was glad that I need not meet the eyes of my grandparents by daylight,
modesty, I hated even myself because he had touched
rrow, gave my thoughts a welcome turn. I remembered how it had shone yesterday i
y. It was to be sure not a name we mentioned at Aghadoe. Indeed, even before I knew about Uncle Luke there
ws as though their name had never been banned, as though they still came and went as frie
my, and that one never knew in what corner of the world he mi
d been unjustly taken from her, and in her cause he had spent his patrimony which had once been great. And now since she no longer lived, having given up her gentle sou
nterest to spend it in the service of the Princess Pauline, and that he was now very poor, too poor to ke
wson had bought Damerstown he had tried to obtain possession of Brosna, and that his offer had
gh, God knows, but I keep my honour intact, and that forbids that I should see Da
heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset; and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the little birds' voices as well as the fid
ocks of repulsion through my blood. I felt that if he had really kissed me I must have killed him or myself. My fingers twitched as I thought on a certain dagger, little but deadly, which lay in a glass case in the
w far ahead of me Dido had run. But suddenly she was brought to my mind by
and choked up, for it was long since we had kept gamekeepers. I had to creep on my hands and knees through t
ed for me with an air of expectancy, as though she
of which I had never seen before. It must have rusted there from the old days till my poor dog by some accident had released it. I saw that there w
sure I was going to release her. But that was not so easy.
d. But as I rose to go and she saw that I was leaving her, she began immediately a loud, almost hyst
myself, and then I knelt down beside her and
other would be uneasy about me, and that presently my grandfather would have to be told, and the whole household would be anxious. What was I to do? I c
n my life as when I heard a shout close at hand. I believe that if it ha
led out. "My dog is caught in
ugh the undergrowth; then he emerged into the little glade an
palate which we use in Ireland as a sound of pity and concern, to the rescue of the dog
worse. The teeth of the trap had grown blunt,
since it would not be easy to find a finer gentleman than my grandfather. And I had the portrait of Uncle Luke
er was finer th
e change. Some wave of emotion passed over it, troubling its g
ghosts apparelled themselves like the rose! You are very like some one I on
d Dawson had taken me for. Who cou