Mrs.Lewson had left her comfortable English home to be his housekeeper, when he tried his rash experiment of farming in Ireland.

And, more wonderful still, even wearisome Sir Giles became an agreeable person in his nephew's company.
Iris set the example of retiring at an early hour to her room.
There was something terrible in the pastoral silence of the place.

It associated itself mysteriously with her fears for Arthur; it suggested armed treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps----?
Iris shrank from her own horrid thought.

A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the window.

As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on horseback rode up to the house.