"What did you do all the year that you was inside the hill?" he said.
"I don't know," Kathleen answered; "it seemed only a day to me, and I can't remember and I can't think what it was that I did to fill all that time."
"And how did you like the fairies?" said Terence.
"The Good People? They were very kind to me and I liked them very much, but I wouldn't have let them keep me--I wouldn't have stayed--so long, if I had known."
"You wouldn't have let them? You wouldn't have stayed? And what would you have done?"
"And who was there besides the fairies?" Terence asked.
"Why, there was--oh, I don't want to talk to you about it, and I don't think you ought to make me."
"You don't need," said Terence. "I know who was there. I know who he is and what he is, and I know the kind of talk that he talked to you. He made love to you. I know that well enough. That's what he would do. But do you mind the promise that your father made to my father the day after we was born? I want you should remember that promise."
"It was no promise at all," Kathleen said, "and I won't let you talk to me that way, and I don't see that it matters to you what he--what anybody said to me anywhere, and I won't tell you any more."
"Ah!" said Terence; "he did make love to you. And you think you can talk any way you like to me and you won't let me talk any way I like to you. Do you know that his staying in that hill with the fairies depends on me? Do you know that--"
Terence turned to see if anybody else was listening and saw Mrs. O'Brien looking straight at him. He stopped short in what he was saying, and then, speaking lower, he went on: "Don't dare to tell anybody what I was saying to you; you don't know what I can do, but I might show you if I took the notion."
For the rest of the time that he stayed Terence said not a word, but he sat and stared at Kathleen. And now she thought that there was something more terrible in his look than there had been before. It seemed to have a kind of spell about it. Kathleen had a feeling that she could not move while he looked at her, although when she tried it she found that she could.
The most natural thing in the world for Kathleen to do would have been to tell her grandmother about this and about all that Terence had said to her, but, whether it was because of the way that Terence had looked at her or for some other reason, she did not tell her. Sometimes after that, when she and Terence met, he reminded her again of what he called the promise, but oftener he said nothing, or next to nothing, and only looked at her in that same way, and then she felt as if she could do nothing of herself, and that if he told her to do anything, she would have to do it.