had come chiefly from lack of leaders; for preachers could not be suddenly transmuted into generals, or traders into commanders-in-chief. There had been a half-heartedness about the whole business, arising from mutual distrust. The atrocities of Wexford shocked the Northern Presbyterians, who were only told of the excesses of the Catholics. Derry, too, was jealous of Down, Antrim of both. On the other hand, the Hessian mercenaries irritated all classes--it was the armed occupation of a conquered territory by a swinish conqueror. The flame was skilfully fanned. Amnesty for political offences was vaguely spoken of, which soon merged into sanguinary denunciation, and concluded in the devotion of whole towns to fire and sword. The people knew not how to act. If Wexford was subdued, the lash would surely fall on their backs to punish them for their known detestation of the Sassanagh. It would be better, then, to rise, some argued, so as at least to gain something in exchange for inevitable punishment. And so, undisciplined and ill-led, Antrim rose and was crushed; then Down took the field, to suffer a like fate. It was the old, sad story over again of Wexford, without Father Roche or the priest of Boulavogue. The insurrection was evanescent; accompanied by much intermittent bravery on the part of the peasants, much imbecility on the part of the leaders, awful retribution on the part of the Hessians and squireens. Cassidy found everywhere the feeling which Lord Clare had worked for, and was overwhelmed with admiration at the cleverness of the chancellor. Every one was mourning for a brother or a son. A gloom of failure hung like a pall over the peasantry. The tradesmen of the towns had lost all self-confidence, and were bowed in humiliation. Their lives were so miserable that they cared no more what happened; the iron heel had crushed them both in body and soul. The few whose spirit yet flickered formed themselves into banditti, who for years continued to infest the mountains and wild tracts. How difficult are such memories to eradicate; how tenacious and how spreading are their roots! What a long array of sedatives may be required to blot out the remembrance of a crime of such portentous magnitude as this which we are contemplating!

Meanwhile the dreamland of Ennishowen knew nothing of these things. The fairy islet of Glas-aitch-é seemed defended from outer evil by a spell, which gave the sleeping knights in the sea-caves no cause for waking. The seals rolled over on the blue-green waves as though the world were not full of sorrow; the eagles soared high up in ether, dazzled by the glory of the sun. As month followed month my lady saw that her pet project was brought no nearer to realisation than in the old days of Strogue; that it was further off, indeed; for Shane had grown as coldly indifferent to his cousin as she was to him. He made no love to her, did not seem to see her; the intercourse of those whom my lady longed to see acting as lovers was as calm as that between a brother and a sister. It was exasperating.

My lady hugged her religion, which taught her that those who follow the national faith were capable of any crime. She gloated over the narrative of the horrors on Wexford Bridge; thanked God that she was not so bad as other people; affected a certain journal recently printed by a missionary who had preached Christ's doctrine--or what he took to be such--to the benighted heathen, in which was written: 'Had much sweet enjoyment to-day in reading a sermon on the justice of God in the damnation of sinners.' Her letters brought her news which by degrees changed, so it seemed, the whole tenor of her way of thinking. At least Doreen thought so as she surveyed her aunt, who appeared now to act in spasms of contradictory impulse. At one moment the world was apparently to her so black that there was nothing for it but to sit down without hope to await the welcome end. At another moment she became feverishly-restless and energetic, chafing evidently under some hidden goad which was too bitter to be endured with outward calm. Doreen watched her with increasing interest; for Time, which was changing my lady, had changed her too, by removing the apathetic dreaminess that had, upon arriving in the north, lulled the torn fibres of her disillusioned nature with the anodyne which follows disappointment. As events unfolded themselves, the two ladies changed places. My lady, so imperious and impatient of contradiction, became apathetic, but with an uncanny resignation which increased her age all at once by at least ten years. The proud foot, instead of disdaining the earth as it used to do, lost its elasticity and dragged upon the ground. The incipient look of terror for which her eyes had always been remarkable, developed into the amaze of one who has seen a ghost face to face, while the skin round them was dry and burning, and darkened to a purplish brown. For hours and hours would she sit, like one inanimate, staring at that ghost which she only could behold, turning with a nervous start if a door or window were opened suddenly. Sometimes--but that was seldom--her surcharged heart found relief in tears; not soothing dew, but water which burned new furrows down her wasted cheek. It was evident that there was some awful weight upon her mind, which was growing heavier--was squeezing her life-blood out by drops.

Doreen set herself to wonder what this could mean. It looked like the effort of an anguished soul to fly from memory and hoodwink remorse. Yet why should the punctiliously upright dowager be possessed by so dire a visitation? The old lady (really old now, though her years were but fifty-three) kept muttering to herself when she thought she was alone; then looked fiercely up, with glaring eyes like coals, from a suspicion that she might have betrayed something. Once her niece caught her in an excess of what seemed like madness--babbling some frantic words out loud through a thick silken kerchief which she held against her mouth. It was clear that there was some secret which was bursting to come out--that was devouring her piecemeal--and that she adopted this strange way of giving vent to it. Her sufferings must indeed be terrible, Miss Wolfe thought, if that marble pride was powerless to conceal them. No human frame may bear for long such wrenching. Either the stern countess must go raving mad, or else she would certainly soon die.

One night when (sleepless herself) Doreen rose to listen at her aunt's door, she caught, amid inarticulate babble, the oft-repeated words, 'Terence--Shane!' muttered in such tones of anguish, that, shivering, she crept back to bed, warned as by chilling vapour from the threshold of a secret which 'twere better not to know. Terence--Shane! Her two sons, then, were at the bottom of the mystery--the two sons who in their mother's mind stood on such different platforms. Doreen watched on, but still found no clue to the labyrinth. The countess seemed sometimes, she observed, to be much occupied with her project--that wild notion, unpractical in the beginning, which events had made even more incongruous--of uniting these cousins who had so little in common at the first, and who had now between them the gulf of the late rebellion. Then she would seem by a mental reaction to recoil from the idea, and do her best to prevent the two from meeting who, as it was, so seldom met. Perhaps the lady really had a brain affection, Miss Wolfe's mind suggested to her at times. Perhaps she, Doreen, was trying to solve a riddle to which there was no solution. All whom it concerned knew only too well that my lady disliked her second son. It was preposterous to suppose that his joining the popular party should affect his mother in this manner. It was natural that her pride should be hurt, because he flouted her known opinions and embraced the tenets of those whom she chose to consider as unworthy of consideration. But that she should be absolutely sinking under the agony of the disgrace was altogether out of the question. When the news came that, after