the dinner while you were teaching French and Latin and the use of the globes and Shakespeare, and the musical glasses, the elements of drawing and the harp, the piano, and writing articles for the Edinburgh Review. Is that a fair statement of your plan, Mononia ?”

"You are laughing at me," she said quietly; "but I have been talking very seriously. Of course, I know I could not do all the household work myself, but it is no part of my plan to turn away dear old Mrs. Ryan and her husband. They have always been with us, and will always be with us, I hope; and they would keep the little cottage in perfect order and do everything for us much better than they can at present, when they have far more work than they can properly do. Murtagh would keep the boat in order for us; for, dear father, I mean to have our boat still, and find a cottage near the river, and, indeed, indeed, I think we could be very happy if you will only listen to my ideas, and let Maurice and me help you to become independent and free once more."

"Then Maurice is in this great scheme, too?"

"Maurice is with me in everything I try to do. We have been comrades ever since we were children; and I could not come to any resolve,— I mean,” she said hastily correcting herself, "any resolve which concerns us all alike without Maurice's agreement and support."

"But I thought part of the plan was that Maurice was to escape out of all the trouble by going off to London to make a great career for himself there, and setting up as a rival, perhaps, to Charles Dickens or Alfred Tennyson."

"Dear father, that was one of our ideas for the future, -for the vague future, I am afraid. Maurice could not possibly go to London just now to seek his fortune, for the good reason that we have none of us any money to enable him to go there and to set up for himself.

For the present he must stay here, and help you all he can; and he may be of much help while we are making some arrangements to get rid of all those debts, and to begin a new and different sort of life."

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Mononia, you really talk as if I were not a person to be consulted in this matter at all,- as if my life were to be laid out for me by my son and daughter without anybody taking the trouble even to ask me for my opinion on the subject. I really must have time to think over all this. My decision cannot be given at a moment's notice."

"But things will not wait," Mononia pleaded. "We know quite well- only too well, Maurice and I — what trouble it must cause you to make all this change; and our great object is to save you all the trouble we can and to do everything for you, not to put you to the pain of making any decision. Oh, do trust to us! Do put your trust in us! We will make it all as smooth as we can. Only we cannot bear the thought of what may happen to you if these debts go on increasing, and there is no hope of meeting them."

"Do you think I have no friends?" he asked in reproachful tone.

"I am afraid we have worn out our friends, or most of them," Mononia answered sadly. "And, even if we had not, we sicken at the prospect of living on the bounty of our friends,-living like some of the privileged beggars who come round the house on Sunday. Oh, my dear father, we cannot endure any longer to see you put in so humiliating a position. Let us end it once for all. It is only a firm resolve and a brave struggle, and then we can all be happy again."

Mr. Desmond was for the moment really touched. Moreover, he preferred anything to the trouble of arguing the matter out too long. It suddenly came into his mind, too, that there was something attractive and

picturesque in the idea of the humble cottage by the riverside, and the descendant of the great family sheltered there by his devoted son and daughter. He began to think there was a good deal to be said for Mononia's plan of action. Then another idea came into his mind: What if all this were but a dramatic or melodramatic prelude to the triumphant announcement that Mononia was about to become Mr. Woodward's wife, and thus to save the whole situation? This seemed to him the most likely explanation of the sudden pressure brought to bear upon him. It had been his intention to obtain from Mononia a full account of what had happened during her interview with Woodward; but now it occurred to him that the most graceful thing on his part would be to say nothing about Woodward, and let the drama proclaim its happy conclusion at the right time. He had not failed to notice, when he returned to the drawing-room with Maurice, that Woodward was close beside Mononia and her harp; and it did not seem that their attitude towards each other spoke of anything like the rejection of a lover's proposal. So, with a feeling of satisfaction at his own acuteness, he made up his mind to put himself in Mononia's hands, and let her announce the happy ending in her own good time.

"Mononia," he said sweetly, "you have ever been a devoted daughter to me; and in many ways you have much more good sense than your old father. I put myself wholly in your hands, dear child. Do as you will. I feel well convinced that, whatever you decide to do, will be the best for all of us."

Then Mononia in her delight threw her arms round him and kissed him on both cheeks; and Mr. Desmond felt somehow as if he ought to be the subject of a poem or the central figure in a picture illustrating paternal tenderness and filial devotion.

"Now, dear girl," he said, "let us speak no more for

the present of this crisis which we have to go through. It is enough that I put my full trust in you, and that you are free to take whatever course you think is for the best. You must go to bed now and have a good sleep, or you will wither your roses and will wear but a melancholy face at Captain Carey's to-morrow night and only set people talking. For we must go to Carey's, of course, Mononia,- we can't get out of that; and not to go would only sound an alarm for nothing, and you don't want to do that, do you?"

"Dear father, it would be hard indeed of me if I were to object to do anything which gave you the slightest pleasure, when you are doing so much to meet my wishes. Besides, I think you are right. I think we had better go through to-morrow evening in the old way, and not set people talking before we are ready to act." It gave her a feeling of genuine pleasure to be able to tell her father that she thought he was in the right, although it were only about Captain Carey's party. She thought that her father had yielded bravely and nobly, and she felt intensely grateful to him. He believed that he had divined the secret of a delightful little plot about which he must pretend to know nothing until the happy moment should have arrived for its full revelation. Thus Mononia and her father parted for the night on terms of complete harmony and of absolute misunderstanding.

T

CHAPTER VII

OUR SET

HIS story has to do, for the greater part, with a set of people, mostly young, who lived in that southern seaport town the spires of whose churches were visible from the upper windows of Desmond Lodge. It might probably be described as a set of peculiar people, although by no means in the sense in which the two words have come to hold in more modern social discourse. Most of the stories which describe the life of Ireland, especially the life of a few years back, seem to be constructed on the assumption that Ireland was peopled exclusively by landlords and peasants.

The set with which this story has mainly to deal was made up almost altogether of middle-class personages belonging generally to the professional orders, abiding in cities and towns, and neither owning ancestral acres nor digging in the fields with spades. Among them, indeed, were some who, like the elder Desmond, maintained with pride the theory that they had an ancestry, and that only the invasions of the tyrant Saxons had dispossessed them of the castles and the estates which ought to be theirs, and put them to the necessity of working for a living.

Maurice Desmond was one of the rising lights of a social circle which included a number of clever, wellread, and ambitious young fellows, the sons of local barristers, solicitors, and physicians, all fairly well to do, and each of them filled with a fond belief that he was destined, somehow or other, to make a distinct name for himself. An intense love for reading and for what would now be called culture was common to almost all the young fellows who belonged to this circle. There