n, laugh until the tears run down their faces. Monica
joins in from sheer sympathy; but Kit, who is sitting in the embrasure
of a distant window and who had been strangely silent ever since the
invitation came from Aghyohillbeg, maintains a stern gravity.

"Poor man," says Miss Penelope, wiping her eyes, "I shall never forget
the night your sweet mother, my dear Monica, most unintentionally
offended him about the diamond--you recollect, Priscilla? Tell Monica of
it."

"He always wore a huge diamond ring upon his little finger," says Miss
Priscilla, addressing Monica, "of which he was very proud. He was at
this time about fifty-three, but used to pose as a man of thirty-nine.
One evening showing the ring to your mother, then quite a girl, he said
to her, in his stilted way, 'This jewel has been in our family for fifty
years.' 'Ah! did you buy it, Mr. Fitzgerald?' asks your mother, in her
sweet innocent way. Ha, ha, ha!" laughs Miss Priscilla, "you should have
seen his face. It was a picture! and just when he was trying to make
himself agreeable to your poor mother, and acting as if he was a
youthful beau of twenty-five, or at least as young as the best of us."

"That was so like mother," says Monica, in a low tone. "She always knew
where to _touch_ people."

"Oh, no, my dear, not at all like her," says Miss Penelope, hastily.
"She didn't _mean_ it, you must understand; she was the very soul of
sweetness, and would not willingly affront any one for the world."

For just an instant Monica lifts her eyes and gazes earnestly at her
aunt; but the old face is so earnest and sincere that with a faint sigh
she lowers her eyes again, and makes no further remark.

"After that he married his cousin's wife, a widow with one child, this
girl, Bella," says Miss Priscilla, still full of reminiscences, as old
people will be. "A most unpleasant person I thought her, though she was
considered quite a belle in those days."

"She always appeared to me such a silly woman," says Miss Penelope.

"She is worse than that now," says Miss Priscilla, who seems specially
hard on the Fitzgeralds. "She is a shocking old woman, with a nose like
a flower-pot. I won't say she drinks, my dear Penelope, because I know
you would object to it; but I _hear_ she does, and certainly her nose is
her betrayer."

"Do you remember," says Miss Penelope, "how anxious she once was to
marry George Desmond?" This she says in a very low tone.

"Yes, I remember