ce my wife left me I have had no means of communicating
with her by the assistance of any common friend. Having
heard that you are about to visit her at Dresden I feel a
great desire to see you that I may be enabled to send by
you a personal message. My health, which is now feeble,
and the altered habits of my life render it almost
impossible that I should proceed to London with this
object, and I therefore ask it of your Christian charity
that you should visit me here at Loughlinter. You, as a
Roman Catholic, cannot but hold the bond of matrimony
to be irrefragable. You cannot, at least, think that it
should be set aside at the caprice of an excitable woman
who is not able and never has been able to assign any
reason for leaving the protection of her husband.

I shall have much to say to you, and I trust you will
come. I will not ask you to prolong your visit, as I have
nothing to offer you in the way of amusement. My mother is
with me; but otherwise I am alone. Since my wife left me I
have not thought it even decent to entertain guests or to
enjoy society. I have lived a widowed life. I cannot even
offer you shooting, as I have no keepers on the mountains.
There are fish in the river doubtless, for the gifts of
God are given let men be ever so unworthy; but this, I
believe, is not the month for fishermen. I ask you to come
to me, not as a pleasure, but as a Christian duty.

Yours truly,

ROBERT KENNEDY.

Phineas Finn, Esq.

As soon as he had read the letter Phineas felt that he had no
alternative but to go. The visit would be very disagreeable, but it
must be made. So he sent a line to Robert Kennedy naming a day; and
wrote another to Lady Laura postponing his time at Dresden by a week,
and explaining the cause of its postponement. As soon as the debate
on the Address was over he started for Loughlinter.

A thousand memories crowded on his brain as he made the journey.
Various circumstances had in his early life,--in that period of his
life which had lately seemed to be cut off from the remainder of his
days by so clear a line,--thrown him into close connection with this
man, and with the man's wife. He had first gone to Loughlinter, not
as Lady Laura's guest,--for Lady Laura had not then been married, or
even engaged to be married,--but on her persuasion rather than on
that of Mr. Kennedy. When there he had asked Lady Laura t