t of what her future would be in a luxurious
English household. She could see the well-regulated property, the tidy
cottages, where squire and parson would permit her help, but not need
it. An old woman looked from her doorway as they passed and said: "God
speed ye! God bring ye safe home and to heaven!"

They had come to the high road now, and as they stopped to let a drove
of cattle pass, she turned and met the Doctor's wistful eyes with a
flash of enthusiasm in hers.

"I will stay," she said. "I will give my life to Cloon and its poor!"

Then, as they reached the stile which led into Inagh, she crossed it
lightly and walked up the narrow path, scarcely remembering to look back
before she was out of sight and wave her hand in farewell to her happy
lover.

Happy was not, perhaps, the word to describe him by. A sudden rapture
had swept over him, blinding his vision, when she had said, "I will
stay." Yet now that she was out of sight without having deigned him one
touch of her hand, one soft word, he felt as if all had been a dream;
and was also conscious of a feeling, too subtle to be formed into a
thought, that there was something wanting in this supreme moment which
surely is not wanting when two hearts for the first time know themselves
to be beating for each other. But she had always been such an object of
worship to him, as one beyond his sphere, that he remembered how far
away she had been from him but yesterday, and that doubtless the
ordinary rules of love must be put aside when one so high stooped to
crown the life of so unworthy a worshipper.

II.

Colonel Eden returned that evening, and for some days Louise was
constantly occupied with his affairs, driving and walking with him and
listening to his plans and projects, and thus giving up her own solitary
expeditions and visits.

She was glad of the excuse to do this. The moment of exaltation in which
she had resolved to devote her life to these poor Galway peasants had
passed away, and though she kept pictures before her mind of a redeemed
district, and children brought up in health and cleanliness instead of
disease and dirt, and home industries taking the place of the idleness
that followed spasmodic labour, misgivings entered with them as she saw
herself no longer "the lady" who stooped from a high level, but a mere
doctor's wife (she would not admit even to her thoughts the undesirable
title of "Mrs. Quin"), living in that small staring house at t