house, and mounting a flight of stone steps,
knocked loudly at the door. Some minutes
elapsed before a voice answered him, and
inquired his business. It was the old woman
servant. She admitted him, and refastened
the door with a chain.

"Where is your mistress?" inquired Roche.

The woman, with a strange bewildered
look, motioned to him to follow her. She
led him into a little room lined with books,
and faintly lighted by a lamp hung from
the ceiling; there, seated in a chair by
the table, pale and motionless as death,
he recognised the form of his betrothed.
Roche would have sprung forward to clasp
her in his arms; but the thought of her
recent sorrow, and the coldness and silence
of her manner, awed him.

"I am glad you have come to-night," she
said, as soon as they were alone. "This
very hour I have formed a resolution, which
would give me no rest until I had told you
of it."

"No, no," said Roche, anticipating her
meaning. "This terrible affliction must not
separate, but link us closer to each other!"

"Roche," she replied, in the same chilled
unimpassioned voice, "I declare to you
solemnly and before Heaven, that the promise
I gave to you last year can never be
fulfilled!"

"I came to-night in the hope of consoling
you in your sorrow," replied Roche. "Do
not think that I would press you, now, on any
thing relating to my own happiness. Let me
do something to cheer your solitary life.
Show me some way in which I may lighten
the burden of your trouble, and I will ask at
present for nothing else."

"A reason that I cannot name to you,"
she replied, "compels me to appear
ungrateful. I entreat you to leave me. This
interview is more than I can bear. Believe
me, the pain our parting gives me is equal
to yours. I ask of you the greatest proof
you can give me now of your affection. It is
that you believe my resolve to be forced
upon me inevitably; but that it is firmly
and for ever taken; and that you take my
hand, and promise never to seek me, to see
me, any more."

Roche took her cold hand, and turned
away. "I cannot promise this," he exclaimed
passionately. "I will leave you to-night,
since my presence gives you pain. But I
declare to you, I cannot cease to hope that
you may, one day, repent of this cruel
determination."

The young barrister pondered, on his way
back to Wexford, upon the melancholy reception
he had met with. Half suspecting that her
troubles had affected her reason, and that her
cold and calm manner was the result of some
fixed delusion, he repented of not having
interrogated the old servant. Sometimes, he
fancied that, ignorant of his endeavours in her
brother's behalf, and of the cause of his delay
in coming to her, she believed him to be guilty
of neglect. Sometimes, it seemed to him
more probable that she had no motive for
her conduct, beyond the desire to save him
from the disgrace of an alliance with one
whose brother had suffered death at the hands
of the hangman. But, whatever might be
the reason of her behaviour, and in spite
of the pain his visit appeared to cause her,
the thought of leaving her in that solitary
place was insupportable. He determined,
at all events, to see her before returning to
Dublin.

What passed between them at this interview
need not be told. In compliance with
her entreaties, he promised to leave the
neighbourhood; but, only on condition that
she would meet him that day six months,
and assure him, from her own lips, that her
resolution was still the same.

Roche returned to the capital, where, in
the increasing labours of his profession,
he endeavoured to bury his thoughts, until
the six months should have passed. The
appointed day—the very hour he had named
—found him again at Killowen. Ellen
Howley received him as before. The little
room in which he found her, the place in
which she sat, the tone of her voice, were in
nowise changed. She repeated to him her
determination, and Roche, according to his
promise, departed from her again. Thus,
for several years, at long intervals, the
barrister returned to Killowen, and always
with the same result. In the course of
time, her obstinacy irritated him, and the
repeated disappointments he experienced
gradually wore away much of his love for
her. He pitied her lonely and cheerless life,
and would gladly have restored her to the
world; but, by degrees, he came to know that
his affection for her was not the ardent
passion that it had been. One day, upon
the occasion of one of these visits, Ellen
Howley spoke to him of the injustice he
did himself, in continuing to wait for a
change which could never, in this world,
come. Not without a sorrowful heart, when
he knew that the moment for separation
had at last arrived, Roche entreated her to
remember him whenever she had need
of aid or counsel; and finally bade her
farewell.

Many years passed, and Ellen Howley
continued to live, shut up in the great house
at Killowen. No visitor ever entered there,
and she rarely went abroad. When she was seen,
it was noted that her looks grew more and more
careworn. Though still a young woman, her
hair became partially grey, and her form
wasted to a shadow. Few who saw her now
forebore to pity her, remembering how
beautiful she had been, and seeing how she had
suffered for the errors of others. The house
in which she lived, looked every year more
dreary and neglected. The roof, the door,