’My father was an Irishman, and a fine, handsome man.  He was a soldier, a corporal in the Welsh Fusiliers, and used to be called Corporal O’Grady.  He was going through this country to Ireland, to visit his friends, on leave, when he first saw mother, and fell in love with her, and she with him.  She knew that her father would not be willing that they should marry, so she ran away with him to Ireland.  They travelled about for some time with his regiment, but, after I was born, mother went to settle in Ireland with father’s family, and there she had three other children, two boys and a girl.  After this my father was wounded in India, and got his discharge and his half-pay.  He became a kind of under-agent for a gentleman that lived in England, so we were very well off as long as he lived; but he died when I was about twelve years old, and then mother did not well know what to do.  I remember my father’s death, and all our trouble, as if it was yesterday.

’She set up a little school, and for some years did pretty well.  She could teach all that the farmers’ daughters wanted to learn, and I helped her; so we managed to live.  It was a hard struggle sometimes, but everybody was kind to widow O’Grady and her orphans; God reward them.

’But the bad time came for poor Ireland; the famine visited us, and then the pestilence!  Ye have heard enough of the horrors, without doubt, but not half of what they really were.  We were all starving, dying—­I saw enough people die to make me wish myself dead hundreds of times, to be hidden from the sight; but I was fated to live.  You, ladies, in your charity, have saved me again; but oh! if it were not wicked, I should wish myself with my mother, brothers, and sister in heaven.’

Here the poor girl’s sobs choked her speech, and Mrs Prothero entreated her not to proceed.

’Only one word more, my ladies, and I have done.  When they were all gone—­all—­all—­and I only left, I did not care what became of me.  I went about amongst those stricken down with the fever; but, woe is me, I never caught it.  I fasted from morning to night, day after day, but I could not die of starvation; nothing would kill me.  I was alone in the wide world, yet it would not please God to take me to another, much as I prayed to Him.

’Before mother died she told me to go into Wales, and try to find if she had any relations left.  It was all she said, or had strength for; and before she got ill she seldom talked of her friends.  All that I know of them I heard from my father when I was quite a child.  He told me that mother had written to her father when she settled in Ireland, and that her letter had been returned with a note, saying that he was dead, and his only son gone away, no one knew where.  This was her brother, and my uncle, but I do not know where to find him, only I am come to seek them, that I may do her bidding.’

‘And what was your mother’s name?’ asked Mrs Prothero.