“It is that already, I think,” said he.
“At any rate, it will be so to all others.
Good-bye, Lady Desmond.”
“Good-bye, Owen; and God bless you. My
secret will be safe with you.”
“Safe! yes, it will be safe.” And
then, as she put her cheek up to him, he kissed it
and left her.
He had been very stern. She had laid bare to
him her whole heart, and he had answered her love
by never a word. He had made no reply in any
shape,—given her no thanks for her heart’s
treasure. He had responded to her affection by
no tenderness. He had not even said that this
might have been so, had that other not have come to
pass. By no word had he alluded to her confession,—but
had regarded her delusion as monstrous, a thing of
which no word was to be spoken.
So at least said the countess to herself, sitting
there all alone where he had left her. “He
regards me as old and worn. In his eyes I am
wrinkled and ugly.” ’Twas thus that
her thoughts expressed themselves; and then she walked
across the room towards the mirror, but when there
she could not look in it: she turned her back
upon it without a glance, and returned to her seat
by the window. What mattered it now? It
was her doom to live there alone for the term of life
with which it might still please God to afflict her.
And then looking out from the window her eyes fell
upon Owen as he rode slowly down across the park.
His horse was walking very slowly, and it seemed as
though he himself were unconscious of the pace.
As long as he remained in sight she did not take her
eyes from his figure, gazing at him painfully as he
grew dimmer and more dim in the distance. Then
at last he turned behind the bushes near the lodge,
and she felt that she was all alone. It was the
last that she ever saw of Owen Fitzgerald.
Unfortunate girl, marred in thy childhood by that
wrinkled earl with the gloating eyes; or marred rather
by thine own vanity! Those flesh-pots of Egypt!
Are they not always thus bitter in the eating?
And now my story is told; and were it not for the
fashion of the thing, this last short chapter might
be spared. It shall at any rate be very short.
Were it not that I eschew the fashion of double names
for a book, thinking that no amount of ingenuity in
this respect will make a bad book pass muster, whereas
a good book will turn out as such though no such ingenuity
be displayed, I might have called this “A Tale
of the Famine Year in Ireland.” At the
period of the year to which the story has brought
us—and at which it will leave us—the
famine was at its very worst. People were beginning
to believe that there would never be a bit more to
eat in the land, and that the time for hope and energy
was gone. Land was becoming of no value, and the
only thing regarded was a sufficiency of food to keep
body and soul together. Under such circumstances
it was difficult to hope.
