to it--oh, so readily! There is something
in the glitter of a theatre--what people call the boards,
the gaslights, the music, the mock love-making, the
pretence of being somebody, the feeling of mystery which
is attached to you, and the feeling you have that you are
generally unlike the world at large--which has its charms.
Even your name, blazoned in a dirty playbill, without any
Mister or Mistress to guard you, so unlike the ways of
ordinary life, does gratify one's vanity. I can't say why
it should be so, but it is. I always feel a little prouder
of myself when father is not with me. I am Miss O'Mahony,
looking after myself, whereas other young ladies have to
be watched. It has its attractions.

But--but to be the wife of Frank Jones, and to look after
Frank's little house, and to cook for him his chicken and
his bacon, and to feel that I am all the world to him, and
to think--! But, oh, Frank, I cannot tell you what things
I think. I do feel, as I think them, that I have not been
made to stand long before the glare of the gas, and that
the time will certainly come when I shall walk about
Ballintubber leaning on your arm, and hearing all your
future troubles about rents not paid, and waters that have
come in.

Your own, own girl,

RACHEL O'MAHONY.

CHAPTER IX.

BLACK DALY.

Frank Jones received his letter just as he was about to leave
Castle Morony for the meet at Ballytowngal, the seat, as everybody
knows, of Sir Nicholas Bodkin. Ballytowngal is about two miles from
Claregalway, on the road to Oranmore. Sir Nicholas is known all
through the West of Ireland, as a sporting man, and is held in high
esteem. But there is, I think, something different in the estimation
which he now enjoys from that which he possessed twenty years ago.
He was then, as now, a Roman Catholic,--as were also his wife and
children; and, as a Roman Catholic, he was more popular with the
lower classes, and with the priests, who are their natural friends,
than with his brother grand-jurors of the country, who were, for the
most part, Protestants.

Sir Nicholas is now sixty years old, and when he came to the title at
thirty, he was regarded certainly as a poor man's friend. He always
lived on the estate. He rarely went up to Dublin, except for a
fortnight, when the hunting was over, and when he paid his respects
to the Lord Lieutenant. The house at Ballyto