It was that risk, a risk of which she guessed so little, which overshadowed the three days which had been added to Caragh's sojourn at Ballindra, and which settled, black and heavy, on his reflections when she waved him a farewell.  
Lettice had driven him the bleak ten miles to the dreary little station which lay like a great gray stone upon the stony fields, and he had resigned himself to eight hours of Irish travel and his thoughts, doubting of which he would be the rather rid.
 
The announcement of a man's affection for a woman is regarded, to-day at least, dynamically. It is supposed to put things in motion; and it is left, very reasonably, for the man to explain what.
 
Maurice recognized the obligation; but he asked a breathing space in which to adjust the machinery. There was a good deal to be arranged, he said. There was considerably more than could be told a bride. His affairs, he explained, entangled by the provisions of his father's will, were beginning to adjust themselves. But his income for the present was provisional, and till certain securities had been realized and charges paid—things which could not be hurried—he would hardly know how he stood, not definitely enough, at any rate, to speak of settlements.
 
Lettice made a mouth at that.
 
"I know," he said, as he softened its displeasure, "but there's your brother!"—he was her guardian and the sole trustee of her small possessions. "I can take a shot at his first question."
 
"Oh, so can I," she sighed. "But when will you be able to answer it?"
 
"Say in six months," he suggested. "Can you have all that patience?"
 
She nodded, and so, quite honestly, Caragh obtained his respite; though the arrangements for which he needed it were not entirely financial.
 
It was, curiously enough, the very honesty of the transaction which troubled his Celtic mind as he travelled eastward.
 
Since he had to hide from her the real necessity for postponement, he would have preferred to hide it behind the responsible audacity of a lie; behind something for which he could feel manfully and contritely accountable.
 
Deception was least endurable which did not compromise the deceiver. He hated the hedging truth.
 
He hated more things that morning than he often took the trouble even to think about, and they were mostly phases of himself. He was conscious too, as the train rolled across the weary strapwork of stonewalled fields, of a new sensation. He felt to have left a part of himself in Ballindra, fastened there securely, yet tied to him still by a thread that seemed drawn out of him, as the weaving filament from a spider's body, which, far or fast as he might travel, he could not break. It would hold him and bring him back.
 
The part which he had left there was the pledge he had given, the word of his honour; a word which had been a lie at best: yet no true oath that he had ever sworn had seemed to have half its sanctity. It was her belief that made it sacred and more binding than the truth.
 
The proud way she wore this mock jewel, as though it were a priceless stone, shut for ever the giver's lips ............