that the
noise of Tanty's tumultuous entrance fell unheeded upon her ears.

All her sympathies stirred within her, the old lady advanced to the
girl with the intention of gathering her to her bosom. But as she drew
near, the black and white of the open diary attracted her eye under
the circle of lamplight, and being possessed of excellent long sight,
she thought it no shame to utilise the same across her grand-niece's
prostrate, heaving form, before making known her presence.

_"And so I sit and cry."_

Miss Molly was carrying out her programme with much precision, if
indeed her attitude, prone along the table, could be described as
sitting.

Miss O'Donoghue's eyes and mouth grew round, as with the expression of
an outraged cockatoo she read and re-read the tell-tale phrases. Here
was a complication she had not calculated upon.

"Dear, dear," she cried, clacking her tongue in disconsolate fashion,
so soon as she could get her breath. "What is the meaning of this, my
poor girl?"

Molly leaped to her feet, and turning a blazing, disfigured
countenance upon her relative, exclaimed with more energy than
politeness: "Good gracious, aunt, what _do_ you want?"

Then catching sight of the open diary, she looked suspiciously from it
to her visitor, and closed it with a hasty hand. But Miss O'Donoghue's
next words settled the doubt.

"Well, to be sure, what a state you have put yourself into," she
pursued in genuine distress. "What has happened then between you and
that fellow, whom I declare I begin to believe as crazy as Rupert
says, that you should be crying your eyes out over his going back to
his island?--you that I thought could not shed a tear if you tried.
Nothing left but to sit and cry, indeed."

"So you have been reading my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly,
stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my
private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness,
relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of
rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this
disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the
world. I wish I were dead, I do."

Again Tanty opened her arms, and this time she did draw the stormy
creature to a bosom, as warm and motherly as if all the joys of
womanhood had not been withheld from it.

"Tell me all about it, my poor child." There was a distinct feeling of
comfort in the grasp of the old arms,