She went into Sir Shawn's office to write the order. Patsy would come for it presently.
After she had written it she went out by the open French window and climbed the rising ground at the back of the house. Very often she went up there of afternoons to look at the sunset. She had always loved sunsets.
The afternoon had been grey, but at the top of the hill she was rewarded for her climb. On one side the sloping valley was filled with a dun-coloured mist. Over it leant the dun-coloured cloud which was a part of the grey heavens. To the other side were the hills, coloured the deep blue which is only seen in the West of Ireland. Behind them were long washes of light, silver and pale gold. The dun cloud above had caught the sapphire as though in a mirror. Round the Southern and Western horizon ran the broad belt of light under the sapphire cloud, while to North and East the dun sky met the dun-coloured mist.
She went back after a while, her sense of beauty satisfied. From that hill one could hear anything, horse or vehicle, coming from a long way off. The sound ascended and was not lost in the winding and twisting roads. But she would not acknowledge disappointment to herself. She had gone up to look at the evening sky and it had been beautiful with one of the strange kaleidoscopic effects which makes those Western skies for ever new and beautiful.
The tea had been brought in and the lamps lit when a visitor was announced--Sir Felix Conyers. She was glad she had not heard the noise of his arrival and mistaken it for Shawn's.
Sir Felix was an old soldier who had held an important command in India. He was a rather fussy but very kind-hearted person whom Mary O'Gara liked better than his handsome cold wife with her organized system of charities.
"This is kind, Sir Felix," she said. "Shawn is not home yet. They met at the Wood of the Hare this morning. The scent must have lain well. We were a little anxious about the frost before the wind went to the South-West."
Then she discovered that Sir Felix, a transparently simple person, was labouring under some curious form of excitement. He stammered as he tried to answer, and looked at her furtively. He dropped his riding whip, which he was carrying in his hands, stooped to look for it and came up rather apologetic and more nervous than before.