of the court,
with one great curve, down to the old ruined lodge which opened on to
the road running from Kanturk to Cork. It was here that the row of
elm trees stood, and it was here that she had once walked with a hot,
eager lover beside her, while a docile horse followed behind their
feet. It was here that she walked daily; and was it possible that she
should walk here without thinking of him?

It was always on the little well-worn path by the road-side, not on
the road itself, that she took her measured exercise; and now, as she
went along, she saw on the moist earth the fresh prints of a horse's
hoofs. He also had ridden down the same way, choosing to pass over
the absolute spot in which those words had been uttered, thinking of
that moment, as she also was thinking of it. She felt sure that such
had been the case. She knew that it was this that had brought him
there--there on to the foot-traces which they had made together.

And did he then love her so truly,--with a love so hot, so eager, so
deeply planted in his very soul? Was it really true that a passion
for her had so filled his heart, that his whole life must by that be
made or marred? Had she done this thing to him? Had she so impressed
her image on his mind that he must be wretched without her? Was she
so much to him, so completely all in all as regarded his future
worldly happiness? Those words of his, asserting that love--her
love--was to him a stern fact, a deep necessity--recurred over and
over again to her mind. Could it really be that in doing as she had
done, in giving herself to another after she had promised herself to
him, she had committed an injustice which would constantly be brought
up against her by him and by her own conscience? Had she in truth
deceived and betrayed him,--deserted him because he was poor, and
given herself over to a rich lover because of his riches?

As she thought of this she forgot again that fact--which, indeed, she
had never more than half realized in her mind--that he had justified
her in separating herself from him by his reckless course of living;
that his conduct must be held to have so justified her, let the
pledge between them have been of what nature it might. Now, as she
walked up and down that path, she thought nothing of his wickedness
and his sins; she thought only of the vows to which she had once
listened, and the renewal of those vows to which it was now so
necessary that her ear should be deaf.

But