had been the first necessity; and life in cities, among the haunts of
men, had been impossible with such means as this woman possessed. When
she had called her daughter to her, and had sought peace under the roof
which her friend the priest had found for her, peace and a roof to
shelter her had been the extent of her desires. To be at rest, and
independent, with her child within her arms, had been all that the woman
asked of the gods. For herself it sufficed. For herself she was able to
acknowledge that the rest which she had at least obtained was infinitely
preferable to the unrest of her past life. But she soon learned,--as she
had not expected to learn before she made the experiment,--that that
which was to her peace, was to her daughter life within a tomb. "Mother,
is it always to be like this?"

Had her child not carried the weight of good blood, had some small
grocer or country farmer been her father, she might have come down to
the neighbouring town of Ennistimon, and found a fitting mate there.
Would it not have been better so? From that weight of good blood,--or
gift, if it please us to call it,--what advantage would ever come to her
girl? It can not really be that all those who swarm in the world below
the bar of gentlehood are less blessed, or intended to be less blessed,
than the few who float in the higher air. As to real blessedness, does
it not come from fitness to the outer life and a sense of duty that
shall produce such fitness? Does any one believe that the Countess has a
greater share of happiness than the grocer's wife, or is less subject to
the miseries which flesh inherits? But such matters cannot be changed
by the will. This woman could not bid her daughter go and meet the
butcher's son on equal terms, or seek her friends among the milliners of
the neighbouring town. The burden had been imposed and must be borne,
even though it isolated them from all the world.