he right to
regard me as his own; but now I cannot take that right back again,
even at your wish. I must write to him at once, mamma, and tell him
this."

"Clara, at any rate you must not do that; that at least I must
forbid."

"Mother, you cannot forbid it now," the daughter said, after walking
twice the length of the room in silence. "If I be not allowed to send
a letter, I shall leave the house and go to him."

This was all very dreadful. Lady Desmond was astounded at the manner
in which her daughter carried herself, and the voice with which she
spoke. The form of her face was altered, and the very step with which
she trod was unlike her usual gait. What would Lady Desmond do? She
was not prepared to confine her daughter as a prisoner, nor could she
publicly forbid the people about the place to go upon her message.

"I did not expect that you would have been so undutiful," she said.

"I hope I am not so," Clara answered. "But now my first duty is to
him. Did you not sanction our loving each other? People cannot call
back their hearts and their pledges."

"You will at any rate wait till to-morrow, Clara."

"It is dark now," said Clara, despondingly, looking out through the
window upon the falling night; "I suppose I cannot send to-night."

"And you will show me what you write, dearest?"

"No, mamma. If I wrote it for your eyes it could not be the same as
if I wrote it only for his."

Very gloomy, sombre, and silent, was the Countess of Desmond all that
night. Nothing further was said about the Fitzgeralds between her
and her daughter, before they went to bed; and then Lady Desmond did
speak a few futile words.

"Clara," she said. "You had better think over what we have been
saying, in bed to-night. You will be more collected to-morrow
morning."

"I shall think of it of course," said Clara; "but thinking can make
no difference," and then just touching her mother's forehead with her
lips she went off slowly to her room.

What sort of a letter she wrote when she got there, we have already
seen; and have seen also that she took effective steps to have her
letter carried to Castle Richmond at an hour sufficiently early in
the morning. There was no danger that the countess would stop the
message, for the letter had been read twenty times by Emmeline and
Mary, and had been carried by Herbert to his mother's room, before
Lady Desmond had left her bed. "Do not set your heart on it too
warmly," said Herbert's