She smiled. “I’d like to have seen the two little lads. ’Tis a pity you didn’t bring them.” Baffled, he sat down again on the edge of the bed and watched her. “Frank wanted them here that time, but sure...” She lapsed again into silence, then shook her head. “Your father wouldn’t have it.”

“He was dead!” he burst out. “He died when I was nine!”

“Oh yes.” She nodded. Her eyes lifted slowly, searching for his face, and she said, in her old voice, “None of ye did what he wanted ye to do.”

What you wanted us to do! That’s what you mean. It was you who kept him by you, referring all things to him, justifying your tyranny by his assent from the shades. And yet, we didn’t hate him. At least, I didn’t. Christ, wasn’t that a miracle, that I never grew to hate him!

“He was a fine man!” he said, with his voice raised.

That seemed to penetrate to her. She shifted uneasily. “He never knew what he wanted. I often tried to tell him, but I couldn’t, for fear he wouldn’t take it from me.” She lapsed into a silence. “He was foolish, like—”

“Like Tom!” he said triumphantly. She looked up quickly.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

But he didn’t want to hear any more. He got up quickly, and she looked startled when the bed creaked. Over her head, he lifted his hands. “In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti...” he whispered, and remembered the morning he had touched her cheeks with his hands, his palms that had been bound together in the sacrament of ordination.

“Who is it?” Her head turned, eyes wandering in search of him. But he couldn’t bear to stay any longer. He was afraid of what would happen when those eyes would find him.

On the way down the stairs, he paused to blow his nose angrily. The girl came out into the hall and smiled up at him. “Won’t you wait and have a bite to eat, Father?”

“No, no, child, I must go.”

“But I have the kettle on.”

“No!” And to atone for his rude shout, which startled himself too, he dug his money out of his pocket and showered it into her hand. “There now, buy yourself some sweets.”

And as she stood there, staring into her hand, he slammed the door shut, afraid of that voice now calling from upstairs, “Who is it?”

*