would have required a harder
heart than his. She rose from her chair and stood close over him as she
repeated her demand, "When will you make my child your wife?"

"You do not want me to answer you at this moment?"

"Yes;--at this moment. Why not answer me at once? She has told me all.
Mr. Neville, you must think not only of her, but of your child also."

"I hope not that," he said.

"I tell you that it is so. Now answer me. When shall my Kate become your
wife?"

He still knew that any such consummation as that was quite out of the
question. The mother herself as she was now present to him, seemed to
be a woman very different from the quiet, handsome, high-spirited, but
low-voiced widow whom he had known, or thought that he had known, at
Ardkill. Of her as she had there appeared to him he had not been ashamed
to think as one who might at some future time be personally related to
himself. He had recognized her as a lady whose outward trappings, poor
though they might be, were suited to the seclusion in which she lived.
But now, although it was only to Ennis that she had come from her nest
among the rocks, she seemed to be unfitted for even so much intercourse
with the world as that. And in the demand which she reiterated over him
she hardly spoke as a lady would speak. Would not all they who were
connected with him at home have a right to complain if he were to bring
such a woman with him to England as the mother of his wife. "I can't
answer such a question as that on the spur of the moment," he said.

"You will not dare to tell me that you mean to desert her?"

"Certainly not. I was coming over to Ardkill this very day. The trap is
ordered. I hope Kate is well?"

"She is not well. How should she be well?"

"Why not? I didn't know. If there is anything that she wants that I can
get for her, you have only to speak."

In the utter contempt which Mrs. O'Hara now felt for the man she
probably forgot that his immediate situation was one in which it was
nearly impossible that any man should conduct himself with dignity.
Having brought himself to his present pass by misconduct, he could
discover no line of good conduct now open to him. Moralists might tell
him that let the girl's parentage be what it might, he ought to marry
her; but he was stopped from that, not only by his oath, but by a
conviction that his highest duty required him to preserve his family
from degradation. And yet to a mother, with such a demand o