l parties that Feemy should be at home. She
determined to call at Ballycloran when Feemy might be supposed to
have settled herself, and content herself for the present with
hearing from the girl who came for the clothes that she had got home
safe.

When Father John called on the Saturday, she talked over the subject
as fully with him as she could without alluding to the matter
respecting which she was so much in doubt. He declared his intention
of seeing Feemy on the following Monday, and of speaking to her
strongly on the subject of the trial which was so soon coming on; and
he begged Mrs. McKeon to do the same afterwards--as perhaps having
become latterly used to her interference, Feemy might bear from her
what she had to be told, with more patience than she would from
himself.

"Indeed I will, Father John, but do you be gentle with her. She's
broken-hearted now; you'll find her very different from the
hot-headed creature she was before her sorrows began."

"I fear she is--I fear she is; but, Mrs. McKeon, has she ever shown a
feeling of regard--a spark of interest, for her noble brother?--it's
that so annoys me in Feemy; I could feel for her--weep for her--and
forgive her with all my heart--all but that."

"Ah, Father John," answered the lady; "it's not for me to preach to
you; but where would we all be at the last, if our Judge should say
to us, 'I can forgive you all but that?'"

"God forbid I should judge her; God forbid I should limit that to
her, which I so much need myself. But isn't her heart hardened
against her brother? Oh, if you could have seen him as I have done
this morning--if you could believe how softened is his heart! He had
never much false pride in it--it is nearly all gone now! If you could
have heard how warmly, how affectionately he asks after the sister
that won't mention his name; if you could know how much more anxious
he is on her account and his father's, than on his own, Feemy's
coldness and repugnance would strike you as it does me. I'm afraid
her chief sorrow is still for the robber that would have destroyed
her, and has destroyed her brother."

"Of course it is, Father John--and so it should be. I'm a woman and a
mother, and you may take my word respecting a woman's heart. No wife
could love her husband more truly than Feemy loved that man: unworthy
as he was, he was all in all to her. Would it not, therefore, show
more heartlessness in her to forget him that is now dead, than th