"They'll not be satisfied till they have you dead, too, dragging at you!" protested Mrs. Mangan. "What nonsense they have, and you there only this morning! On earth, what can you do more for him?" "They think more of me, my dear, than you do!" said the Doctor, cheerfully. "Be listening, now, to what I'm saying. You're to be as civil as be damned to old Frederica, and tell Barty he's to fix up with Larry to come here--what day is this to-day is? Thursday?--Tell him I'll be in on Sunday afternoon, and I want to talk to him on very special business. Now, will you remember that?" He repeated his commands, as people will who have learnt, as most Doctors must learn, the fallibility of the human memory and its infinite powers of invention and substitution. Mrs. Mangan listened obediently and promised attention. Although in matters to which she attached slight importance, such as the proportions of a prescription, her memory was liable to betray her, in other affairs, it had the cast-iron accuracy of the peasant, and without having been privileged with the Doctor's full confidence, she was probably deeper in it than he was aware. While still these intentions with regard to young Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger were whirling in the air above him, as a lasso swirls and circles before it secures its victim, that young man was, it is no exaggeration to say, staggering home under the weight of his happiness. After the sacrament at the Tober an Sidhe he and Christian had gone from the hill, hand in hand, like two children. In silence they had gone through the dark wood, and almost in silence had made their mutual farewells in the fragrant shadow of the pines. When the soul is tuned to its highest it cannot find an interpreter. The lips can utter only broken sounds, pathetically inadequate to express emotions that may, in some future sphere, make themselves known in terms other than are permitted to us. There is an inner radiance that is beyond thought, that might conceivably utter itself in music or in colour, but that can no more be translated into words than can the radiance of the mid-day sun be more than indicated by earthly painters with earthly pigments. So it was with Larry and Christian. It chances now and then on this old, and prosaic, and often tearful earth that some kindly spirit leaves the door of Paradise a little open, and two happy people--though sometimes it is only one--are caught inside for a time, and come out, as Larry did, bewildered, dazzled, wandering back to earth, he scarcely knew how, saying, drunkenly, to himself: "Good Lord! She is so bright to-night!" as the blackbird said, who was "blowing his bugle to one far bright star." CHAPTER XXVIII