class="normal">She would be glad, therefore, when the establishment at the Abbey should break up, when all the vans and horses and carriages should migrate to Donegal, leaving her--a waif--behind, with nothing to attend to but serious business.

Of course when my lady and her son started for Ennishowen, she would return to her old home in Dublin. She would inhabit once more her little bedroom in Molesworth Street, and would make herself so necessary to her father by fond artful prodigalities of love and tenderness, as to prevent him from ever allowing her to leave him any more. It was all very well, when she was a child, to send her to abide with her aunt, but now she was a woman, and her place was with her father. Then a small inward voice whispered, which caused her heart to beat quick time:

'What if, by my loving influence, I might change at length his views? He is weak, but so kind and excellent; he leans on my aunt because hers is the more masculine nature of the two; and he yearns for support and countenance. Why should he not come to lean on me? My will is as strong as hers--our mutual affection unstained by a difference, unruffled by a ripple! Oh! if I could persuade him that there are nobler aspirations than mere gathering of gold. That if, instead of money-grubbing to make me a fortune (well-meaning, tender father!) he would spend all he has freely for his country's sake, I would love him all the more dearly for my beggary; what if, by constant dropping on the stone of obstinacy, I could bring him to feel this--how happy, how truly happy, we might come to be together!'

Then, in less exalted moments of reflection, she felt that she deceived herself, that this might never be; that if she elected, in theory, to embrace for a holy cause the vow of poverty in her own person, she had no right to force her convictions upon a man whose glass of life was more than half run out, whose life ran in a groove, and who had so distinct a predilection for flesh-pots. Well, without going to extremes, it would be a joy to guide him just a little, to prevent his truckling too glaringly to Castle influence. If only he were not attorney-general and prosecutor for the Crown!' When the French expedition shall have arrived,' she thought, 'and swept this wicked Government into the sea, how intense a satisfaction will it be to say to the Irish Directory, "Spare at least my father, for my sake! I have worked heart and soul in the cause; you owe me this boon, the only one I ask of you!"'

Certainly, from every point of view it seemed necessary for the young lady to separate herself from the Abbey and her prejudiced aunt with all speed, and assume her proper place in her own home.

Hence for more reasons than one she looked forward to the forthcoming break in the Abbey ménage as to the commencement of a new era of reviving hope and usefulness, and quite longed for Shane's departure with all his bags and baggage.