In the meantime, the old woman had returned home, and her first occupation was to indulge her grief; for, sitting down at the little table in her parlour, she covered her eyes with her hands, and wept till the tears ran through her fingers.  After a time, however, she calmed herself, and rising, looked for a moment into a small looking-glass, which showed her face entirely disfigured with tears.  She then went into a little adjacent room, which, as well as the parlour, was the image of neatness and cleanness.  She there took a towel, dipped it in cold water, and seemed about to bathe away the traces from her cheeks.  The next moment, however, she threw the towel down, saying, “No, no! why should I?” She then returned to the parlour, and called down the passage, “Betty, Betty!”

An Irishwoman, of about fifty years of age, clothed much in the same style, and not much worse than her mistress, appeared in answer to her summons; and, according to the directions she now received, lighted a single candle, put up a large heavy shutter against the parlour window, and retired.  The mistress of the house remained for some time sitting at the table, and apparently listening for every step without; though from time to time, when a heavier and heavier blast of wind shook the cottage where she sat, she gazed up towards the sky, and her lips moved as if offering a prayer.

At length, some one knocked loudly at the door, and starting up, she hurried to open it and give entrance to the stranger whom we have mentioned before.  She put a chair for him, and stood till he asked her to sit down.

“So, my good lady,” he said, “you lived a long time with Colonel and Mrs. Sherbrooke.”

“Oh! bless you, yes, sir,” replied the woman, “ever since the Colonel and the young lady came here, till she died, poor thing, and then I remained to take care of the boy, dear, beautiful fellow.”

“You seem very sorry to lose him,” rejoined the stranger, “and, doubtless, were sadly grieved when Mrs. Sherbrooke died.”

“You may well say that,” replied the woman; “had I not known her quite a little girl? and to see her die, in the prime of her youth and beauty, not four-and-twenty years of age.  You may well say I was sorry.  If her poor father could have seen it, it would have broke his heart; but he died long before that, or many another thing would have broken his heart as well as that.”

“Was her father living,” demanded the stranger, “when she married Colonel Sherbrooke?”

The woman, without replying, gazed inquiringly and steadfastly on the stranger’s countenance for a moment or two; who continued, after a short pause—­“Poo, poo, I know all about it; I mean, when she came away with him.”

“No, sir,” replied the woman; “he had been dead then more than a year.”

“Doubtless,” replied the stranger, “it was, as you implied, a happy thing for him that he did not live to see his daughter’s fate; but how was it, I wonder, as she was so sweet a creature, and the Colonel so fond of her, that he never married her?”