ause they are fools. But I cannot cure them of their folly. My uncle
thinks that I should marry one of my own class."

"Class;--what class? He is a gentleman, I presume, and she is a lady."

"That is very true;--so true that I myself shall act upon the truth. But
I will not make his last years wretched. He is a Protestant, and you are
Catholics."

"What is that? Are not ever so many of your lords Catholics? Were they
not all Catholics before Protestants were ever thought of?"

"Mrs. O'Hara, I have told you that to me she is as high and good and
noble as though she were a Princess. And I have told you that she shall
be my wife. If that does not content you, I cannot help it. It contents
her. I owe much to her."

"Indeed you do;--everything."

"But I owe much to him also. I do not think that you can gain anything
by quarrelling with me."

She paused for a while before she answered him, looking into his face
the while with something of the ferocity of a tigress. So intent was her
gaze that his eyes quailed beneath it. "By the living God," she said,
"if you injure my child I will have the very blood from your heart."

Nevertheless she allowed him to return alone to the house, where she
knew that he would find her girl. "Kate," he said, going into the
parlour in which she was sitting idle at the window,--"dear Kate."

"Well, sir?"

"I'm off."

"You are always--off, as you call it."

"Well,--yes. But I'm not on and off, as the saying is."

"Why should you go away now?"

"Do you suppose a soldier has got nothing to do? You never calculate, I
think, that Ennis is about three-and-twenty miles from here. Come, Kate,
be nice with me before I go."

"How can I be nice when you are going? I always think when I see you go
that you will never come back to me again. I don't know why you should
come back to such a place as this?"

"Because, as it happens, the place holds what I love best in all the
world." Then he lifted her from her chair, and put his arm round her
waist. "Do you not know that I love you better than all that the world
holds?"

"How can I know it?"

"Because I swear it to you."

"I think that you like me--a little. Oh Fred, if you were to go and
never to come back I should die. Do you remember Mariana? 'My life is
dreary. He cometh not,' she said. She said, 'I am aweary, aweary; I
would that I were dead!' Do you remember that? What has mother been
saying to you?"

"She has been bidding me to do