And what notice could have been taken of two ladies who came from nobody
knew where, to live in that wild out-of-the-way place, nobody knew why?
They called themselves mother and daughter, and they called themselves
O'Haras;--but there was no evidence of the truth even of these
assertions. They were left therefore in their solitude, and never saw
the face of a friend across their door step except that of Father Marty.

In truth Mrs. O'Hara's life had been of a nature almost to necessitate
such solitude. With her story we have nothing to do here. For our
purpose there is no need that her tale should be told. Suffice it to say
that she had been deserted by her husband, and did not now know whether
she was or was not a widow. This was in truth the only mystery attached
to her. She herself was an Englishwoman, though a Catholic; but she had
been left early an orphan, and had been brought up in a provincial town
of France by her grandmother. There she had married a certain Captain
O'Hara, she having some small means of her own sufficient to make her
valuable in the eyes of an adventurer. At that time she was no more
than eighteen, and had given her hand to the Captain in opposition to
the wishes of her only guardian. What had been her life from that time
to the period at which, under Father Marty's auspices, she became the
inhabitant of Ardkill Cottage, no one knew but herself. She was then
utterly dissevered from all friends and relatives, and appeared on the
western coast of County Clare with her daughter, a perfect stranger to
every one. Father Marty was an old man, now nearly seventy, and had been
educated in France. There he had known Mrs. O'Hara's grandmother, and
hence had arisen the friendship which had induced him to bring the lady
into his parish. She came there with a daughter, then hardly more than a
child. Between two and three years had passed since her coming, and the
child was now a grown-up girl, nearly nineteen years old. Of her means
little or nothing was known accurately, even to the priest. She had told