er reverend lord; "and Father Barney is
not so bad as I once thought him."

"I hope you are not going over too, Aeneas?" And his consort almost
cried as such a horrid thought entered her head. In her ideas any
feeling short of absolute enmity to a servant of the Church of Rome
was an abandonment of some portion of the Protestant basis of the
Church of England. "The small end of the wedge," she would call
it, when people around her would suggest that the heart of a Roman
Catholic priest might possibly not be altogether black and devilish.

"Well, I hope not, my dear," said Mr. Townsend, with a slight touch
of sarcasm in his voice. "But, as I was saying, Father Barney told me
then that this Mr. Prendergast--"

"Oh, I had known of his being there from the day of his coming."

"This Mr. Prendergast, it seems, knew the whole affair, from
beginning to end."

"But how did he know it, Aeneas?"

"That I can't tell you. He was a friend of Sir Thomas before his
marriage; I know that. And he has told them that it is of no use
their attempting to keep it secret. He was over at Hap House with
Owen Fitzgerald before he went."

"And has Owen Fitzgerald been told?"

"Yes; he has been told--told that he is to be the next heir; so
Father Barney says."

Mrs. Townsend wished in her heart that the news could have reached
her through a purer source; but all this, coming though it did from
Father Barney, tallied too completely with what she herself had heard
to leave on her mind any doubt of its truth. And then she began to
think of Lady Fitzgerald and her condition, of Herbert and of his,
and of the condition of them all, till by degrees her mind passed
away from Father Barney and all his iniquities.

"It is very dreadful," she said, in a low voice.

"Very dreadful, very dreadful. I hardly know how to think of it. And
I fear that Sir Thomas will not live many months to give them even
the benefit of his life interest."

"And when he dies all will be gone?"

"Everything."

And then tears stood in her eyes also, and in his also after a while.
It is very easy for a clergyman in his pulpit to preach eloquently
upon the vileness of worldly wealth, and the futility of worldly
station; but where will you ever find one, who, when the time of
proof shall come, will give proof that he himself feels what he
preaches? Mr. Townsend was customarily loud and eager upon this
subject, and yet he was now shedding tears because his young frien