father, an' still more you, mother,
that's a woman, that can urge me to think of joining my fate to that of
a man that has neither shame nor principle? I thought that if you didn't
respect decency an' truth, and a regard for what is right and proper,
that, at all events, you would respect the feelings of your child that
was taught their value."

Both parents felt somewhat abashed by the force of the truth and the
evident superiority of her character; but in a minute or two her worthy
father, from whose dogged obstinacy she inherited the firmness and
resolution for which she had ever been remarkable, again returned to the
subject.

"If Hycy Burke was wild, Kathleen, so was many a good man before him;
an' that's no raison but he may turn out well yet, an' a credit to his
name, as I have no doubt he will. All that he did was only folly
an' indiscretion--we can't be too hard or uncharitable upon our
fellow-craytures."

"No," chimed in her mother, "we can't. Doesn't all the world know that
a reformed rake makes a good husband?--an' besides, didn't them two
huzzies bring it on themselves?--why didn't they keep from him as they
ought? The fault, in such cases, is never all on one side."

Kathleen's brow and face and whole neck became crimson, as her mother,
in the worst spirit of a low and degrading ambition, uttered the
sentiments we have just written. Hanna had been all this time sitting
beside her, with one arm on her shoulder; but Kathleen, now turning
round, laid her face on her sister's bosom, and, with a pressure that
indicated shame and bitterness of heart, she wept. Hanna returned this
melancholy and distressing caress in the same mournful spirit, and both
wept together in silence.

Gerald Cavanagh was the first who felt something like shame at the
rebuke conveyed by this tearful embrace of his pure-hearted and
ingenuous daughters, and he said, addressing his wife:--

"We're wrong to defend him, or any one, for the evil he has done,
bekaise it can't be defended; but, in the mane time, every day will
bring him more sense an' experience, an' he won't repute this work;
besides, a wife would settle him down."

"But, father," said Hanna, now speaking for the first time, "there's
one thing that strikes me in the business you're talkin' about, an' it's
this--how do you know whether Hycy Burke has any notion, good, bad, or
indifferent, of marrying Kathleen?"

"Why," replied her mother, "didn't he write to her upon t