rgive you."

Hitherto, Lady Desmond may probably have played her part well;--well,
considering her object. But she played it very badly in showing that
she thought it possible that her daughter should play her false. It
was now Clara's turn to be proud and indignant.

"Mamma!" she said, holding her head high, and looking at her mother
boldly through her tears, "I have never deceived you yet."

"Very well, my dear. I will take steps to prevent his intruding on
you any further. There may be an end of the matter now. I have no
doubt that he has endeavoured to use his influence with Patrick; but
I will tell your brother not to speak of the matter further." And so
saying, she dismissed her daughter.

Shortly afterwards the earl came in, and there was a conference
between him and his mother. Though they were both agreed on the
subject, though both were decided that it would not do for Clara to
throw herself away on a county Cork squire with eight hundred a year,
a cadet in his family, and a man likely to rise to nothing, still the
earl would not hear him abused.

"But, Patrick, he must not come here any more," said the countess.

"Well, I suppose not. But it will be very dull, I know that. I wish
Clara hadn't made herself such an ass;" and then the boy went away,
and talked kindly over the matter to his poor sister.

But the countess had another task still before her. She must make
known the family resolution to Owen Fitzgerald. When her children
had left her, one after the other, she sat at the window for an hour,
looking at nothing, but turning over her own thoughts in her mind.
Hitherto she had expressed herself as being very angry with her
daughter's lover; so angry that she had said that he was faithless,
a traitor, and no gentleman. She had called him a dissipated
spendthrift, and had threatened his future wife, if ever he should
have one, with every kind of misery that could fall to a woman's lot;
but now she began to think of him perhaps more kindly.

She had been very angry with him;--and the more so because she had
such cause to be angry with herself;--with her own lack of judgment,
her own ignorance of the man's character, her own folly with
reference to her daughter. She had never asked herself whether she
loved Fitzgerald--had never done so till now. But now she knew that
the sharpest blow she had received that day was the assurance that he
was indifferent to herself.

She had never thought herself too