ef Committees;--and Mrs.
Townsend from the mouth of one of her servants, during his absence,
on the same day; and when Mr. Townsend returned to the parsonage,
they met each other with blank faces.

"Oh, Aeneas!" said she, before she could get his greatcoat from off
his shoulders, "have you heard the news?"

"What news?--about Castle Richmond?"

"Yes; about Castle Richmond." And then she knew that he had heard it.

Some glimmering of Lady Fitzgerald's early history had been known to
both of them, as it had been known almost to all in the country; but
in late years this history had been so much forgotten, that men had
ceased to talk of it, and this calamity therefore came with all the
weight of a new misfortune.

"And, Aeneas, who told you of it?" she asked, as they sat together
over the fire, in their dingy, dirty parlour.

"Well, strange to say, I heard it first from Father Barney."

"Oh, mercy! and is it all about the country in that way?"

"Herbert, you know, has not been at any one of the Committees for
the last ten days, and Mr. Somers for the last week past has been
as silent as death; so much so, that that horrid creature, Father
Columb, would have made a regular set speech the other day at
Gortnaclough, if I hadn't put him down."

"Dear, dear, dear!" said Mrs. Townsend.

"And I was talking to Father Barney about this, to-day--about Mr.
Somers, that is."

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"And then he said, 'I suppose you know what has happened at Castle
Richmond?'"

"How on earth had he learned?" asked Mrs. Townsend, jealous that a
Roman Catholic priest should have heard such completely Protestant
news before the Protestant parson and his wife.

"Oh, they learn everything--from the servants I suppose."

"Of course, the mean creatures!" said Mrs. Townsend, forgetting,
probably, her own little conversation with her own man of all work
that morning. "But go on, Aeneas."

"'What has happened,' said I, 'at Castle Richmond?' 'Oh, you haven't
heard,' said he. And I was obliged to own that I had not, though I
saw that it gave him a kind of triumph. 'Why,' said he, 'very bad
news has reached them indeed; the worst of news.' And then he told me
about Lady Fitzgerald. To give him his due, I must say that he was
very sorry--very sorry. 'The poor young fellow!' he said--'The poor
young fellow!' And I saw that he turned away his face to hide a
tear."

"Crocodile tears!" said Mrs. Townsend.

"No, they were not," said h