rs were employed in England to sift out the
truth; and at last, by the united agreement of some dozen men, all
of whom were known to be worthy, it was decided that Talbot was dead,
and that his widow was free to choose another mate. Another mate she
had already chosen, and immediately after this she was married to Sir
Thomas Fitzgerald.

Such was the early life-story of Lady Fitzgerald; and as this was
widely known to those who lived around her--for how could such a
life-story as that remain untold?--no one wondered why she should
be gentle and silent in her life's course. That she had been an
excellent wife, a kind and careful mother, a loving neighbour to
the poor, and courteous neighbour to the rich, all the county
Cork admitted. She had lived down envy by her gentleness and soft
humility, and every one spoke of her and her retiring habits with
sympathy and reverence.

But why should her husband also be so sad--nay, so much sadder?
For Lady Fitzgerald, though she was gentle and silent, was not
a sorrowful woman--otherwise than she was made so by seeing her
husband's sorrow. She had been to him a loving partner, and no man
could more tenderly have returned a wife's love than he had done.
One would say that all had run smoothly at Castle Richmond since the
house had been made happy, after some years of waiting, by the birth
of an eldest child and heir. But, nevertheless, those who knew most
of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peacock on the wall.

It is only necessary to say further a word or two as to the other
ladies of the family, and hardly necessary to say that. Mary and
Emmeline Fitzgerald were both cheerful girls. I do not mean that they
were boisterous laughers, that in waltzing they would tear round a
room like human steam-engines, that they rode well to hounds as some
young ladies now-a-days do--and some young ladies do ride very well
to hounds; nor that they affected slang, and decked their persons
with odds and ends of masculine costume. In saying that they were
cheerful, I by no means wish it to be understood that they were loud.

They were pretty, too, but neither of them lovely, as their mother
had been--hardly, indeed, so lovely as that pale mother was now,
even in these latter days. Ah, how very lovely that pale mother was,
as she sat still and silent in her own place on the small sofa by
the slight, small table which she used! Her hair was gray, and her
eyes sunken, and her lips thin and bloodless