bsidising, with a careful hand, his
attempts to restore the woods and waters, interesting herself in the
housing of his tenants, and renewing the connection of Roscarna with the
parish church of Clonderriff, of which the Hewishes were patrons. It was
she who appointed Marmaduke Considine to the vacant living.

For ten years she lived soberly with Sir Jocelyn at Roscarna, hoping
ardently that a son might be born to them who should carry on the family
name and succeed to the fruits of her economies. In the eleventh year of
their married life it seemed that her hopes were to be realised. Even
Jocelyn, the new Jocelyn, appreciated the importance of the event. He
and Biddy Joyce, now an old and shrivelled woman, but one unrivalled in
maternal experience, nursed Lady Hewish as though the whole of their
future happiness depended on it. Every Sunday young Mr. Considine dined
at Roscarna with the family, and spent the evening in religious
discussions with her ladyship. Every month the doctor rode over from
Galway to feel her pulse. On a dark winter evening in the year eighteen
eighty-three the child was born--a girl. They christened her Gabrielle,
and a week later Lady Hewish died.

II

Her death knocked poor Sir Jocelyn to pieces. Not altogether because
he had loved her, but because he had made the habit of depending on her
and happened to be a creature of habits ... good or bad. So, having
been bereft of that of matrimony, he returned, for a time to that of
drinking, leaving the child in the spiritual charge of Mr. Considine, a
gentleman of small domestic experience, and the physical care of Biddy
Joyce, a mother of many. For the time being Jocelyn was far too busy
to bother his head about her, and Biddy dragged her up in the kitchen
of Roscarna where she had suckled her half-brothers before her, Mr.
Considine exercising a general supervision, pending the day when her
soul should be fit for salvation and ghostly admonition.

In the early stages of Jocelyn's relapse the Parkers of Baggot Street
descended on Roscarna in force: a proceeding that Lady Hewish had
discountenanced in her lifetime. Neither Jocelyn nor Biddy invited
them to stay, and they returned to Dublin scandalised, with the report
of Gabrielle, a very small baby of eighteen months with coal black eyes
and hair, playing like a kitten with the foot of a dead rabbit on the
kitchen floor. "Only to think what poor Laura would have felt!" they
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