lieve us from a heavy task. I trust
that nothing may occur to prevent their coming.' Fervently concurring in
the same wish, I accompanied O'Connor into the parlour, there to await
the arrival of his mother.

God grant that I may never spend such another evening! The O'Gradys DID
come, but their high and noisy spirits, so far from relieving me, did
but give additional gloom to the despondency, I might say the despair,
which filled my heart with misery--the terrible forebodings which I
could not for an instant silence, turned their laughter into discord,
and seemed to mock the smiles and jests of the unconscious party. When
I turned my eyes upon the mother, I thought I never had seen her look so
proudly and so lovingly upon her son before--it cut me to the heart--oh,
how cruelly I was deceiving her! I was a hundred times on the very point
of starting up, and, at all hazards, declaring to her how matters
were; but other feelings subdued my better emotions. Oh, what monsters
are we made of by the fashions of the world! how are our kindlier and
nobler feelings warped or destroyed by their baleful influences! I felt
that it would not be HONOURABLE, that it would not be ETIQUETTE, to
betray O'Connor's secret. I sacrificed a higher and a nobler duty than I
have since been called upon to perform, to the dastardly fear of bearing
the unmerited censure of a world from which I was about to retire. O
Fashion! thou gaudy idol, whose feet are red with the blood of human
sacrifice, would I had always felt towards thee as I now do!

O'Connor was not dejected; on the contrary, he joined with loud and
lively alacrity in the hilarity of the little party; but I could see in
the flush of his cheek, and in the unusual brightness of his eye, all
the excitement of fever--he was making an effort almost beyond his
strength, but he succeeded--and when his mother rose to leave the
room, it was with the impression that her son was the gayest and most
light-hearted of the company. Twice or thrice she had risen with the
intention of retiring, but O'Connor, with an eagerness which I alone
could understand, had persuaded her to remain until the usual hour of
her departure had long passed; and when at length she arose, declaring
that she could not possibly stay longer, I alone could comprehend the
desolate change which passed over his manner; and when I saw them part,
it was with the sickening conviction that those two beings, so dear to
one another, so