the strongly sentinelled chamber of his daughter.  Indignation against Reilly seemed now nearly lost in the melancholy situation of the wretched Cooleen Bawn.  He had just seen her, but, somehow, the interview had saddened and depressed his heart.  Her position and the state of her feelings would have been pitiable, even to the eye of a stranger; what, then, must they not have been to a father who loved her as he did?  “Helen,” said he, as he took a chair in her room, after her guards had been desired to withdraw for a time, “Helen, are you aware that you have eternally disgraced your own name, and that of your father and your family?”

Helen, who was as pale as death, looked at him with vacant and unrecognizing eyes, but made no reply, for it was evident that she either had not heard, or did not understand, a word he said.

“Helen,” said he, “did you hear me?”

She looked upon him with a long look of distress and misery, but there was the vacancy still, and no recognition.

This, I suppose, thought the father, is just the case with every love-sick girl in her condition, who will not be allowed to have her own way; but of what use is a father unless he puts all this nonsense down, and substitutes his own judgment for that of a silly girl.  I will say something now that will startle her, and I will say nothing but what I will bring about.

“Helen, my darling,” he said, “are you both deaf and blind, that you can neither see nor hear your father, and to-morrow your wedding-day?  Sir Robert Whitecraft will be here early; the special license is procured, and after marriage you and he start for his English estates to spend the honeymoon there, after which you both must return and live with me, for I need scarcely say, Helen, that I could not live without you.  Now I think you ought to be a happy girl to get a husband possessed of such immense property.”

She started and looked at him with something like returning consciousness.  “But where is Willy Reilly?” she asked.

“The villain that would have robbed me of my property and my daughter is now safe in Sligo jail.”

A flash of something like joy—­at least the father took it as such—­sparkled in a strange kind of triumph from her eyes.

“Ha,” said she, “is that villain safe at last?  Dear papa, I am tired of all this—­this—­yes, I am tired of it, and it is time I should; but you talked about something else, did you not?  Something about Sir Robert Whitecraft and a marriage.  And what is my reply to that? why, it is this, papa:  I have but one life, sir.  Now begone, and leave me, or, upon my honor, I will push you out of the room.  Have I not consented to all your terms.  Let Sir Robert come tomorrow and he shall call me his wife before the sun reaches his meridian.  Now, leave me; leave me, I say.”

In this uncertain state her father found himself compelled to retire to the drawing-room, where Sir Robert and he met.