e is
impossible. This feud I hint at touches you even more closely than it
touches us, but you cannot feel it more than we do,--perhaps not as
much. The honor of our family has suffered at the hands of the Master of
Coole. He is the enemy of our house!"

"Priscilla!" murmurs Miss Penelope, in a low and trembling tone.

"Do not try to check me, Penelope. I _will_ speak," says Miss
Priscilla, sternly. "This man, years ago, offered one near and dear to
us an indignity not to be lightly borne. The world is wide," turning to
the astonished children, "you can make friends where you choose; but I
would have you recollect that _never_ can a Beresford and a Desmond have
aught in common."

"But what have the Desmonds done to us, Aunt Priscilla?" asks Monica, a
good deal awed by the old lady's solemnity.

"Some other time you shall know all," says Miss Priscilla in the low
tone one might adopt if speaking of the last appalling murder.

"Yes, some other time," echoes Miss Penelope, gently.

CHAPTER III.

How Monica studies the landscape.

"Is it thrue, ma'am, what I hear, that ye'll be wantin' a maid for Miss
Monica?" asks Mrs. Reilly, the cook at Moyne, dropping a respectful
courtesy just inside the drawing-room door. "Ryan let dhrop a word to me
about it, so I made so bould, ma'am, as to come upstairs an' tell ye I
think I know a girl as will come in handy to ye."

"And who is she, Reilly?" asks Miss Priscilla anxiously.

"She's a very good girl, ma'am, an' smart, an' nate, an' I think ye'll
like her," replies cook, who, like all Irish people, finds a difficulty
in giving a direct answer to a direct question. Perhaps, too, there is a
little wiliness in her determination not to name the new servant's
parentage just at present.

"I daresay; I place great reliance upon your opinion, Reilly. But who is
she? Does she come from the village, or from one of the farms? I should
prefer the farms."

"She's as tidy as she can be," says Mrs. Reilly, amiably but still
evasively, "an' a bit of a scholard into the bargain, an' a very civil
tongue in her head. She's seventeen all out, ma'am, and never yet gave
her mother a saucy word."

"That is as it should be," says Miss Priscilla, commendingly. "You feel
a great interest in this girl, I can see. You know her well?"

"Yes, miss. She is me uncle's wife's sisther's child, an' as good a girl
as ever stepped in shoe leather."

"She is then?" asks Miss Priscilla, faintly