her. What had the Fitzgeralds done for her that
she should sorrow for their sorrows? She had lived there, in that old
ugly barrack, long desolate, full of dreary wretchedness and poverty,
and Lady Fitzgerald in her prosperity had never come to her to soften
the hardness of her life. She had come over to Ireland a countess,
and a countess she had been, proud enough at first in her little
glory--too proud, no doubt; and proud enough afterwards in her
loneliness and poverty; and there she had lived--alone. Whether the
fault had been her own or no, she owed little to the kindness of any
one; for no one had done aught to relieve her bitterness. And then
her weak puny child had grown up in the same shade, and was now a
lovely woman, gifted with high birth, and that special priceless
beauty which high blood so often gives. There was a prize now within
the walls of that old barrack--something to be won--something for
which a man would strive, and a mother smile that her son might win
it. And now Lady Fitzgerald had come to her. She had never complained
of this, she said to herself. The bargain between Clara Desmond and
Herbert Fitzgerald had been good for both of them, and let it be
made and settled as a bargain. Young Herbert Fitzgerald had money
and position; her daughter had beauty and high blood. Let it be a
bargain. But in all this there was nothing to make her love that rich
prosperous family at Castle Richmond. There are those whose nature
it is to love new-found friends at a few hours' warning, but the
Countess of Desmond was not one of them. The bargain had been made,
and her daughter would have been able to perform her part of it. She
was still able to give that which she had stipulated to give. But
Herbert Fitzgerald was now a bankrupt, and could give nothing! Would
it not have been madness to suppose that the bargain should still
hold good?

One person and one only had come to her at Desmond Court, whose
coming had been a solace to her weariness. Of all those among whom
she had lived in cold desolateness for so many years, one only had
got near her heart. There had been but one Irish voice that she
had cared to hear; and the owner of that voice had loved her child
instead of loving her.

And she had borne that wretchedness too, if not well, at least
bravely. True she had separated that lover from her daughter; but the
circumstances of both had made it right for her, as a mother, to do
so. What mother, circumstan