oss.

Then she asked herself what would be best for her. She had made for
herself a great reputation, and she did not scruple to tell herself
that this had come from her singing. She thought very much of her
singing, but very little of her beauty. A sort of prettiness did
belong to her; a tiny prettiness which had sufficed to catch Frank
Jones. She had laughed about her prettiness and her littleness a
score of times with Ada and Edith, and also with Frank himself. There
had been the three girls who had called themselves "Beauty and the
Beast" and the "Small young woman." The reader will understand that
it had not been Ada who had chosen those names; but then Ada was not
given to be witty. Her prettiness, such as it was, had sufficed, and
Frank had loved her dearly. Then had come her great triumph, and she
knew not only that she could sing, but that the world had recognised
her singing. "I am a great woman, as women go," she had said to
herself. But her singing was to come to an end for ever and ever on
the 1st of May next. She would be the Countess of Castlewell, and in
process of time would be the Marchioness of Beaulieu. But she never
again would be a great woman. She was selling all that for the marble
halls.

Was she wise in what she was doing? She had lain awake one long
morning striving to answer the question for herself. "If nobody else
should come, of course I should be an ugly old maid," she said to
herself; "but then Frank might perhaps come again,--Frank might come
again,--if Mr. Moss did not intervene in the meantime." But at last
she acknowledged to herself that she had given the lord a promise.
She would keep her promise, but she could not bring herself to exult
at the prospect. She must take care, however, that the lord should
not triumph over her. The lord had called her father an ass. She
certainly would say a rough word or two if he abused her father
again.

This was the time of the "suspects." Mr. O'Mahony had already taken
an opportunity of expressing an opinion in the House of Commons that
every honest man, every patriotic man, every generous man, every
man in fact who was worth his salt, was in Ireland locked up as a
"suspect," and in saying so managed to utter very bitter words indeed
respecting him who had the locking up of these gentlemen. Poor Mr.
O'Mahony had no idea that he might have used with propriety as to
this gentleman all the epithets of which he believed the "suspects"
to be wort