no thanks for her heart's treasure. He had
responded to her affection by no tenderness. He had not even said
that this might have been so, had that other not have come to pass.
By no word had he alluded to her confession,--but had regarded her
delusion as monstrous, a thing of which no word was to be spoken.

So at least said the countess to herself, sitting there all alone
where he had left her. "He regards me as old and worn. In his eyes
I am wrinkled and ugly." 'Twas thus that her thoughts expressed
themselves; and then she walked across the room towards the mirror,
but when there she could not look in it: she turned her back upon
it without a glance, and returned to her seat by the window. What
mattered it now? It was her doom to live there alone for the term of
life with which it might still please God to afflict her.

And then looking out from the window her eyes fell upon Owen as he
rode slowly down across the park. His horse was walking very slowly,
and it seemed as though he himself were unconscious of the pace.
As long as he remained in sight she did not take her eyes from his
figure, gazing at him painfully as he grew dimmer and more dim in the
distance. Then at last he turned behind the bushes near the lodge,
and she felt that she was all alone. It was the last that she ever
saw of Owen Fitzgerald.

Unfortunate girl, marred in thy childhood by that wrinkled earl
with the gloating eyes; or marred rather by thine own vanity! Those
flesh-pots of Egypt! Are they not always thus bitter in the eating?

CHAPTER XLIV.

CONCLUSION.

And now my story is told; and were it not for the fashion of the
thing, this last short chapter might be spared. It shall at any rate
be very short.

Were it not that I eschew the fashion of double names for a book,
thinking that no amount of ingenuity in this respect will make a bad
book pass muster, whereas a good book will turn out as such though no
such ingenuity be displayed, I might have called this "A Tale of the
Famine Year in Ireland." At the period of the year to which the story
has brought us--and at which it will leave us--the famine was at its
very worst. People were beginning to believe that there would never
be a bit more to eat in the land, and that the time for hope and
energy was gone. Land was becoming of no value, and the only thing
regarded was a sufficiency of food to keep body and soul together.
Under such circumstances it was difficult to hope.