The family from Dunmanway spoke to her in the hall but she hardly heard them. All day yesterday she hadn’t been able to eat a thing, the same again at breakfast. ‘You’re looking edgy, Mrs Moledy,’ McGrath had said to her, and she’d told him to mind his own business before she could stop herself.

A letter could have gone astray, you often heard of it. It could be lying somewhere in the post office, maybe fallen under a shelf. It could have fallen out of a bag. ‘God knows,’ muttered Mrs Moledy distractedly. ‘God alone knows.’

The banknotes were still under the tissue paper, which was a worry also, day after day in a hat-box. Two lines on a piece of paper was all she required, two lines to say he was busy due to the wedding, understandable that he should be. A minute, she had estimated in the night, a single minute of his time, then give it to the ferryman to post. She’d often mentioned that that was how he should do it; she’d gone through the thing with him in case he’d ever catch a cold and she’d be worried.

In her bedroom Mrs Moledy tidied her face, and then felt calmer. He’d understand. He’d see at once that the money wasn’t safe in a hat-box, with strangers in the house, and a young maid. She went downstairs again, and opened the door in the hall that led to the basement kitchen, ‘I’m going out,’ she called down to her maid.

Villana entered the church on John James’s arm. Respectfully, the congregation rose. Eyes noted the simplicity of the bride’s cornflower-blue dress, and the absence of bridesmaids, the modest blue and white sweet-peas she carried. The same eyes followed her progress to the altar, where the two solicitors, bridegroom and best man, were of a height. John James, taller by an inch or so, delivered his sister into the Bishop of Killaloe’s care. Beside the Bishop stood Canon Kinchella, white-haired and cherubic, who had baptised the bride in this church twenty-nine years ago. He had not taken it amiss when he’d been told the Bishop had put in a family claim; with the humility that distinguished his long career in the Church of Ireland he had at once agreed to the arrangements that were being made around him.

In the body of the church Mrs Camier stood between her husband and Villiers Hadnett, on whose other side stood the Bishop’s wife. Villana was pale, Lady Rossboyne considered, as any girl would be in the circumstances. She wondered if the Pollexfen boy had TB. At Buttevant, six months ago, a wedding had been cancelled because of TB. Generally that was the reason.