I object to, but anticipation," she retorted; "not
history, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally at the road
you have travelled, quite another to conjure up impossible pictures of
the future."

Salemina calls herself a trifle over forty, but I am not certain of
her age, and think perhaps that she is uncertain herself. She has good
reason to forget it, and so have we. Of course she could consult the
Bible family record daily, but if she consulted her looking-glass
afterward the one impression would always nullify the other. Her hair is
silvered, it is true, but that is so clearly a trick of Nature that it
makes her look younger rather than older.

Francesca came into the room just here. I said a moment ago that she was
the same old Francesca, but I was wrong; she is softening, sweetening,
expanding; in a word, blooming. Not only this, but Ronald Macdonald's
likeness has been stamped upon her in some magical way, so that,
although she has not lost her own personality, she seems to have added
a reflection of his. In the glimpses of herself, her views, feelings,
opinions, convictions, which she gives us in a kind of solution, as
it were, there are always traces of Ronald Macdonald; or, to be more
poetical, he seems to have bent over the crystal pool, and his image is
reflected there.

You remember in New England they allude to a bride as 'she that was'
a so-and-so. In my private interviews with Salemina I now habitually
allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so significant
of her present state of absorption. Several times this week I have been
obliged to inquire, "Was I, by any chance, as absent-minded and dull in
Pettybaw as Francesca is under the same circumstances in Dublin?"

"Quite."

"Duller if anything."

These candid replies being uttered in cheerful unison I change the
subject, but cannot resist telling them both casually that the building
of the Royal Dublin Society is in Kildare Street, just three minutes'
from O'Carolan's, and that I have noticed it is for the promotion of
Husbandry and other useful arts and sciences.

Chapter II. Irish itineraries.

'And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command,
For the fair hills of holy Ireland.'

--Sir Samuel Ferguson.

Our mutual relation