run into the hateful practice of
dissimulation. All this passed through her mind in a moment.

"My dear Francis, I will freely admit that the beatings of my heart are
not altogether without cause; I have been somewhat disturbed, but it
will not signify; I shall be quite well in a moment--but where did you
come from?"

"They told me you had gone up to poor Widow Carrick's--and I took the
short way, thinking to find you there. But what has disturbed you, my
dear Mary? Something has, and greatly too."

She looked up with an affectionate smile into his face, although there
trembled a tear upon her eyelids, as she spoke--

"Do not ask me, my dear Frank; nor don't think the circumstance of
much importance. It is a little secret of mine, which I cannot for the
present disclose."

"Well, my love, I only ask to know if the woman that left you was Poll
Doolin."

"I cannot answer even that, Frank; but such as the secret is, I trust
you shall soon know it."

"That is enough, my darling. I am satisfied that you would conceal
nothing from either your family or me, which might be detrimental either
to yourself or us--or which we ought to know."

"That is true," said she, "I feel that it is true."

"But then on the other hand," said he, playfully, "suppose our little
darling were in possession of a secret which we ought not to know--what
character should we bestow on the secret?"

This, though said in love and jest, distressed her so much that she
was forced to tell him so--"my dear Francis," she replied, with as
much composure as she could assume, "do not press me on the subject;--I
cannot speak upon it now, and I consequently must throw myself on your
love and generosity only for a short time, I hope."

"Not a syllable, my darling, on the subject until you resume it
yourself--how are Widow Carrick's sick children?"

"Somewhat better," she replied, "the two eldest are recovering, and want
nourishment, which, with the exception of my poor contributions, they
cannot get."

"God love and guard your kind and charitable heart, my sweet Mary," said
he, looking down tenderly into her beautiful face, and pressing her arm
lovingly against his side.

"What a hard-hearted man that under agent, M'Clutchy, is," she
exclaimed, her beautiful eye brightening with indignation--"do you know
that while her children were ill, his bailiff, Darby O'Drive, by his
orders or authority, or some claim or other, took away her goose and
the on