studying, was not bad, as the stories of my last night's landlord had
led me to expect; it was a wild, stern, fierce, indomitable
countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies of solitary weeping; but
it was neither cunning nor malignant.

"My name is Bridget Fitzgerald," said she, by way of opening our
conversation.

"And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock Mahon, near Kildoon,
in Ireland?"

A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes.

"He was."

"May I ask if you had any children by him?"

The light in her eyes grew quick and red. She tried to speak, I
could see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and
until she could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before
a stranger. In a minute or so she said--"I had a daughter--one Mary
Fitzgerald,"--then her strong nature mastered her strong will, and
she cried out, with a trembling wailing cry: "Oh, man! what of her?-
-what of her?"

She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked
in my eyes. There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what
had become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and
sat rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not
daring to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause,