'
'I come,' answered Costello, 'because when in the time of Costello De
Angalo my forbears overcame your forbears and afterwards made peace,
a compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants
and his piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a
Dermott with his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by
a Costello for ever.'
'If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,' said the son of
Dermott flushing,' no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to
swing the sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife's
clan have come out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants
have come down from the Ox Mountains'; and while he spoke he kept his
hand inside his coat as though upon the handle of a weapon.
'No,' answered Costello, 'I but come to dance a farewell dance with
your daughter.'
Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale
girl who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes
fixed upon the ground.
'Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you
will never see one another again.'
The girl lifted her eyes and gazed at Costello, and in her gaze was
that trust of the humble in the proud, the gentle in the violent,
which has been the tragedy of woman from the beginning. Costello led
her among the dancers, and they were soon drawn into the rhythm of
the Pavane, that stately dance which, with the Saraband, the Gallead,
and the Morrice dances, had driven out, among all but the most Irish
of the gentry, the quicker rhythms of the verse-interwoven,
pantomimic dances of earlier days; and while they danced there came
over them the unutterable melancholy, the weariness with the world,
the poignant and bitter pity for one another, the vague anger against
common hopes and fears, which is the exultation of love.
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