"Oh, acushla darlin'," cried Norah, "sure we had the warning when the pear tree bloomed. I said it was trouble without reason, and though I broke them all off it couldn't save you." "Oh, my darlin', God help us all." CHAPTER XIV SORROW'S CROWN OF SORROW "Whatever happens!" The words rang through Daffodil's brain like a knell. There was something to happen. She had been so happy, so serenely, so trustingly happy. For her youthful inexperience had not taught her doubt. The cup of love had been held to her lips and she had drank the divine draught fearlessly, with no thought of bitter dregs at the bottom. Grandmere came and unpinned the veil; it was too fine and precious an article to be tumbled about. "Let the rest be," she said. "He is coming and I want to be as I was then." Then they left her lying there on the bed, the gold of her young life turning slowly to dross. Some curious prescience told her how it would be. She heard the low voices in the other room. There was crying too. That was her mother. Felix asked questions and was hushed. Was it hours or half a lifetime! All in her brain was chaos, the chaos of belief striving with disbelief that was somehow illumined but not with hope. He came at last. She heard his step striding through the room and no one seemed to speak to him. He came straight to her, knelt at the bed's side, and took her cold hands in his that were at fever heat. "My poor darling!" he said brokenly. "I should not have learned to love you so well, I should not have asked for your love. But in this new country and beginning a new life it seemed as if I might bury the old past. And you were the centre, the star of the new. Perhaps if I had told you the story----" "Tell it now," she made answer, but it did not sound like her voice. She made no effort to release her hands though his seemed to scorch them.