’While writing these lines I was interrupted.  My servant brought me a letter from Miss Glynn, telling me that a great chance had come her way.  It appears that Mr. Walter Poole, the father of one of her pupils, has offered her the post of secretaryship, and she would like to put into practice the shorthand and typewriting that she has been learning for the last six months.  Her duties, she says, will be of a twofold nature:  she will help Mr. Poole with his literary work and she will also give music lessons to his daughter Edith.  Mr. Poole lives in Berkshire, and wants her to come down at once, which means she will have to leave me in the lurch.  “You will be without an organist,” she writes, “and will have to put up with Miss Ellen McGowan until you can get a better.  She may improve—­I hope and think she will; and I’m sorry to give trouble to one who has been so kind to me, but, you see, I have a child to look after, and it is difficult to make both ends meet on less than three pounds a week.  More money I cannot hope to earn in my present circumstances; I am therefore going down to Berkshire to-morrow, so I shall not see you again for some time.  Write and tell me you are not angry with me.”

’On receiving this letter, I went round to Miss Glynn’s lodgings, and found her in the midst of her packing.  We talked a long while, and very often it seemed to me that I was going to persuade her, but when it came to the point she shook her head.  Offer her more money I could not, but I promised to raise her wages to two pounds a week next year if it were possible to do so.  I don’t think it is the money; I think it is change that tempts her.  Well, it tempts us all, and though I am much disappointed at losing her, I cannot be angry with her, for I cannot forget that I often want change myself, and the longing to get out of London is sometimes almost irresistible.  I do not know your part of the country, but I do know what an Irish lake is like, and I often long to see one again.  And very often, I suppose, you would wish to exchange the romantic solitude of your parish for the hurly-burly of a town, and for its thick, impure air you would be willing—­for a time only, of course—­to change the breezes of your mountain-tops.

’Very truly yours,

‘MICHAEL O’GRADY.’

From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O’Grady.

’GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

’June 22, 19—.

’DEAR FATHER O’GRADY,

’No sooner had I begun to feel easier in my conscience and to dream that my responsibilities were at an end than your letter comes, and I am thrown back into all my late anxieties regarding Nora Glynn’s future, for which I am and shall always be responsible.

’It was my words that drove her out of Ireland into a great English city in which some dreadful fate of misery and death might have befallen her if you had not met her.  But God is good, and he sent you to her, and everything seems to have happened for the best.  She was in your hands, and I felt safe.  But now she has taken her life into her own hands again, thinking she can manage it without anybody’s help!