CHAPTER XLIV

"WHO WAS KATHLEEN?"

The painful incidents of the morning weighed heavily upon Rosalie, and
she was glad when Madame Dugal came to talk with her father, who was
ailing and irritable, and when Mrs. Flynn drove her away with a kiss on
either cheek, saying: "Don't come back, darlin', till there's roses in
both cheeks, for y'r eyes are 'atin' up yer face!"

She had seen Charley take the path to Vadrome Mountain, and to the
Rest of the Flax-beaters she betook herself, in the blind hope that,
returning, he might pass that way. Under the influence of the fresh air
and the quiet of the woods her spirits rose, her pulse beat faster,
though a sense of foreboding and sorrow hovered round her. The two-miles
walk to her beloved retreat seemed a matter of minutes only, so busy were
her thoughts.

Her mind was one luxurious confusion, through which travelled a ghostly
little sprite, who kept tumbling her thoughts about, sneering, smirking,
whispering--"You dare not go to confession--dare not go to confession.
You will never be the same again--never feel the same again--never think
the same again; your dreams are done! You can only love. And what will
this love do for you? What do you expect to happen--you dare not go to
confession!"