ow he had wronged her, and of her
violent death, he could hardly find words severe enough for his own
conduct; and from this point of view, the curse that Bridget had laid
upon him and his was regarded by him as a prophetic doom, to the
utterance of which she was moved by a Higher Power, working for the
fulfilment of a deeper vengeance than for the death of the poor dog.
But then, again, when he came to speak of his daughter, the repugnance
which the conduct of the demoniac creature had produced in his mind,
was but ill disguised under a show of profound indifference as to
Lucy's fate. One almost felt as if he would have been as content to put
her out of existence, as he would have been to destroy some disgusting
reptile that had invaded his chamber or his couch.

The great Fitzgerald property was Lucy's; and that was all--was
nothing.

My uncle and I sat in the gloom of a London November evening, in our
house in Ormond Street. _I_ was out of health, and felt as if I were in
an inextricable coil of misery. Lucy and I wrote to each other, but
that was little; and we dared not see each other for dread of the
fearful Third, who had more than once taken her place at our meetings.
My uncle had, on the day I speak of, bidden prayers to be put up, on
the ensuing Sabbath, in many a church and meeting-house in London, for
one grievously tormented by an evil spirit. He had faith in prayers--I
had none; I was fast losing faith in all things. So we sat--he trying
to interest me in the old talk of other days, I oppressed by one
thought--when our old servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without
speaking, showed in a very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had
something remarkable about his dress, betraying his profession to be
that of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He glanced at my uncle first,
then at me. It was to me he bowed. 'I did not give my name,' said he,
'because you would hardly have recognised it; unless, sir, when in the
north, you heard of Father Bernard, the chaplain at Stoney Hurst?'

I remembered afterwards that I had heard of him, but at the time I had
utterly forgotten it; so I professed myself a complete stranger to him;
while my ever-hospitable uncle, although hating a papist as much as it
was in his nature to hate anything, placed a chair for the visitor, and
bade Anthony bring glasses and a fresh jug of claret.

Father Bernard received this courtesy with the graceful ease and
pleasant acknowledgment w