"If you are determined on certainly destroying our happiness," he
continued, "your will shall be dearer to me than fortune or friends. If
you have a father to feel for you, you will not forget, my love, that I
have a mother whom I love as tenderly, and whose feelings deserve some
consideration."

He took her hand and pressed it in a soothing manner.

"Come, dry those sweet eyes, while I tell you shortly what my plans
shall be," he said.

"You have heard me speak of Danny Mann's sister, who lives on the side
of the Purple Mountain, in the Gap of Dunlough? I have had two neat
rooms fitted up for you in her cottage, and you can have books to read,
and a little garden to amuse you, and a Kerry pony to ride over the
mountains. In the meantimes I will steal a visit now and then to my
mother, who spends the autumn in the neighbourhood. I will gradually let
her into my secret, and obtain her forgiveness. I am certain she will
not withhold it. I shall then present you to her. She will commend your
modesty and gentleness; we will send for your father, and then where is
the tongue that shall venture to wag against the fame of Eily Cregan!"

The young man left her, a little chagrined at her apparent slowness in
appreciating his noble condescension. In his boyhood he had entertained
a passion for his cousin, Anne Chute; but after the long separation of
school and college, he had imagined that his early love was completely
forgotten. The feeling with which he regarded her now was rather of
resentment than indifference, and it had been with a secret creeping of
the heart that he had witnessed what he thought was the successful
progress of Kyrle Daly's attachment. It was under those circumstances