live, though dying, it may
easily be imagined that he did not hide his displeasure when he first
heard that she was alive and better. His brow grew very black, his
cheeks flushed, the drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and he said,
speaking through his closed teeth, "D---- it, doctor, you don't mean to
tell me she's recovering now?"

"I don't say, Mr Lynch, whether she is or no; but it's certain the
fever has left her. She's very weak, very weak indeed; I never knew a
person to be alive and have less life in 'em; but the fever has left
her and there certainly is hope."

"Hope!" said Barry--"why, you told me she couldn't live!"

"I don't say she will, Mr Lynch, but I say she may. Of course we must
do what we can for her," and the doctor took his sherry and went his
way.

How horrible then was the state of Barry's mind! For a time he was
absolutely stupified with despair; he stood fixed on the spot where the
doctor had left him, realising, bringing home to himself, the tidings
which he had heard. His sister to rise again, as though it were from
the dead, to push him off his stool! Was he to fall again into that
horrid low abyss in which even the Tuam attorney had scorned him; in
which he had even invited that odious huxter's son to marry his sister
and live in his house? What! was he again to be reduced to poverty,
to want, to despair, by her whom he so hated? Could nothing be
done?--Something must be done--she should not be, could not be allowed
to leave that bed of sickness alive. "There must be an end of her,"
he muttered through his teeth, "or she'll drive me mad!" And then
he thought how easily he might have smothered her, as she lay there
clasping his hand, with no one but themselves in the room; and as the
thought crossed his brain his eyes nearly started from his head, the
sweat ran down his face, he clutched the money in his trousers' pocket
till the coin left an impression on his flesh, and he gnashed his teeth
till his jaws ached with his own violence. But then, in that sick-room,
he had been afraid of her; he could not have touched her then for the
wealth of the Bank of England!--but now!

The devil sat within him, and revelled with full dominion over his
soul: there was then no feeling left akin to humanity to give him one
chance of escape; there was no glimmer of pity, no shadow of remorse,
no sparkle of love, even though of a degraded kind; no hesitation
in the will for crime, which might yet, by G