_Cooleen Bawn_, and the political circumstances of the country, might
not have inferred as a natural and probable consequence. In fact he had,
on his way home, arrived at nearly the same conclusion. Marriage, as the
laws of the country then stood, was out of the question, and could
not be legitimately effected. What, then, must the consequence of this
irresistible but ill-fated passion be? An elopement to the Continent
would not only be difficult but dangerous, if not altogether impossible.
It was obviously evident that Mary Mahon had drawn her predictions from
the same circumstances which led himself to similar conclusions;
yet, notwithstanding all this, he felt that her words had thrown a
foreshadowing of calamity and sorrow over his spirit, and he passed up
to his own house in deep gloom and heaviness of heart. It is true he
remembered that this same Mary Mahon belonged to a family that had been
inimical to his house. She was a woman who had, in her early life,
been degraded by crime, the remembrance of which had been by no means
forgotten. She was, besides, a paramour to the Red Rapparee, and he
attributed much of her dark and ill-boding prophecy to a hostile and
malignant spirit.

On the evening of the same day, probably about the same hour, the
old squire having recruited himself by sleep, and felt refreshed and
invigorated, sent for his daughter to sit with him as was her wont; for
indeed, as the reader may now fully understand, his happiness altogether
depended upon her society, and those tender attentions to him which
constituted the chief solace of his life.

"Well, my girl," said he, when she entered the dining-room, for he
seldom left it unless when they had company, "Well, darling, what do you
think of this Mr. Mahon--pooh!--no--oh, Reilly--he who saved my life,
and, probably, was the means of rescuing you from worse than death?