omparison between them would now have appeared ridiculous. It was
true many of her opinions savoured of a nationality too strong for his
admiration. She was intensely Irish--or at least what he deemed such.
The traditions which, as a child, she had listened to with eager
delight, had given a bias to her mind that grew more confirmed with
years. The immediate circumstances of her own family added to this
feeling, and her pride was tinctured with sorrow at the fallen condition
of her house. All her affection for her cousins could not blind her to
their great defects. In Mark she saw one whose spirit seemed crushed and
stunned, and not awakened by the pressure of misfortune. Herbert,
with all his kindliness of nature and open-heartedness, appeared more
disposed to enjoy the sunshine of life, than to prepare himself to
buffet with its storms.

How often she wished she had been a boy; how many a day-dream floated
before her of such a career as she might have struck out! Ireland
a nation--her "own sons her rulers"--had been the theme of many an
oft-heard tale, and there was a poetry in the sentiment of a people
recalled to a long-lost, long-sought-for nationality, that excited and
exalted her imagination.

Her convent education had stored her mind with narratives of native
suffering and Saxon tyranny, and she longed for the day of retribution
on the "proud invaders." Great was her disappointment at finding her
cousins so dead to every feeling of this kind; and she preferred the
chivalrous ardour of the English soldier to the sluggish apathy of Mark,
or the happy indolence of Herbert O'Donoghue.

Had Frederick Travers been an Irishman, would he have borne his
country's wrongs so meekly? was a reflection that more than once
occurred to her mind, and never more powerfully than on parting with
him, the very evening we have mentioned. He had accompanied them, on
their return to Carrig-na-curra, which, as the night was fine and the
moon nearly at her full, they did on foot. Kate, who rarely accepted
an arm when walking, had, by some accident, taken his on this occasion,
Sir. Archy leaning on that of Herbert.

The young soldier listened with a high-beating heart, as she related an
incident, of which the spot they were traversing had been the scene.
It was a faithless massacre of a chieftain and his followers, seduced,
under pretences of friendship and a pledge of amity.

"They told him," said she, "that his young wife, who had