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Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately silence with my little bird-like head in the air.
There it was, still frothing and bubbling in three great bowls, and taking up the first of them in my little thin arms goodness knows how I made straight for my mother's room. But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and panting under my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and she fell on me with her usual reproaches.
"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon Nessy beat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's room.
Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessy bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while my mother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room. "Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt Bridget found no need of questions.
She might have badgered the heir of Ballawhaine, but she never did so. That person came into his inheritance, got himself elected member for Ramsey in the House of Keys, married Nessy Taubman, daughter of the rich brewer, and became the father of another son.
I knew they were the evil geniuses of Dermot's life. Lord Malvoisin had been his first tempter as boys at their tutor's, and again in the Guards; and Ernest, or Nessy, Horsman was the mauvais sujet of the family, who never was heard of without some disgraceful story. And Dermot had led my boys among these. All that had brightened life so much to me had suddenly vanished.
I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant, and was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who had been watching from a window, came bouncing down me. "Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you know this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"
But just as I was beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to Aunt Bridget, Nessy said: "No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wiped out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her own daughter instead."
I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the Mate, but Nessy would hear no such explanation. "Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that your Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be done without her." Small as I was that was too much for me.
Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy MacLeod's shrill and harsh and grating. "Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?" Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt Bridget's cold and grey and piercing. "So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deuced pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."
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