nd indistinct. Kate waited not for his coming nearer, but advancing
hastily towards him, cried out--

"Captain Travers, I have a favour to ask of you--one, which my coming
thus to seek----"

"Say no more, Kate, lest I hear what was never intended for my ears,"
said a low, deep voice.

"Mark--cousin Mark, is this you," cried she, with mingled pleasure and
shame.

"Yes," replied he, in a tone of still deeper gravity; "I grieve to
disappoint you--it is me."

"Oh, Mark, mistake me not--do not wrong me," said she, laying her hand
affectionately on his arm. "I have longed so much to see you--to speak to
you, ere we went away."

"To see _me_--to speak to _me_," said he, stepping back, and letting the
moonlight fall full upon his features, now pale as death; "it was not
_me_ you expected to meet here."

"No, Mark, but it was for you I came; I wished to serve--perhaps to save
you. I know your secret, Mark, but it is safe with me."

"And I know yours, young lady," retorted he, bitterly. "I cannot say how
far my discretion will rival your own."

[Illustration: 259]

As he spoke, a horseman darted rapidly past, and as he emerged from the
shadow, turned round in his saddle, stared fixedly at the figures before
him, and then taking off his hat, said--

"Good-night, Miss O'Donoghue."

When Kate-recovered the shock of this surprise, she found herself
alone--Mark had disappeared; and she now returned slowly to the castle,
her heart torn with opposing emotions, among which wounded pride was not
the least poignant.

CHAPTER XXVII. A SUPPER PARTY

As we are about to withdraw our reader for a brief period from the
scenes wherein he has so kindly lingered with us hitherto, we may be
permitted to throw on them a last look ere we part.

On the evening which followed that recorded in our last chapter, the two
old men were seated alone in the tower of Carrig-na-curra, silent and
thoughtful, each following out in his mind the fortunes of him for whom
his interest was deepest, and each sad with the sorrow that never spares
those who are, or who deem themselves, forsaken.

Unaided memory can conjure up no such memorials of past pleasure as
come from the objects and scenes associated with days and nights of
happiness; they appeal with a force mere speculation never suggests,
and bring back all the lesser, but more touching incidents of hourly
intercourse, so little at the time--so much when remembered years
afterwards.