Despite the sweet, warm air of the summer night I was cold.

In the quietness I heard the Abbey clock strike twelve; I heard soft stirrings in the leaves outside; a thousand little sounds which I would not have noticed at another time, that were distinct in the stillness that had come upon me.
I went on making my preparations for bed as though nothing had happened.
I omitted nothing, but all the time I felt as though I were somehow outside my body and knew the dull numbness of it as a thing apart.
When I was ready at last I unlocked the door so that the maid who came with my morning tea and my bath-water should not find it locked.

Then I blew out the candles, and, taking the letter in my hand, I crept into bed.
That night I was awakened by the crying in the shrubbery outside which I had not heard for a long time, and I listened to it, cold in the darkness, till the cocks began crowing and then it ceased.

I knew that the ghosts always came for trouble at Aghadoe, and I prayed hard that the trouble might be only mine and might spare the two dear old people.
The thought of Theobald, and that I had not even noticed the absence of his letters, stung me sharply.

What if harm should come to Theobald?
As the cocks crew and the grey turned to blue and then to gold in the room, I lay staring up at the ceiling, praying that harm had not come to Theobald, that he might be well and happy although I must be miserable for ever..