“Say, what you were goin’ to say,” returned Connor; “Oh, say that one word, and all the misfortunes that ever happened to man, can’t make me unhappy!  Oh, God! an’ is it possible?  Say that word—­Oh! say it—­say it!”

“Well, then,” she continued, “if they knew that I love the son of Fardorougha Donovan, what would become of me?  Now go, for fear my father may come out.”

“But when will I see you again?”

“Go,” said she anxiously; “go, you can easily see me.”

“But when?—­when? say on Thursday.”

“Not so soon—­not so soon,” and she cast an anxious eye towards the garden gate.

“When then—­say this day week.”

“Very well—­but go—­maybe my father has heard from the servants that you are here.”

“Dusk is the best time.”

“Yes—­yes—­about dusk; under the alders, in the little green field behind the garden.”

“Show me the wounded finger,” said he with a smile, “before I go.”

“There,” said she, extending her hand; “but for Heaven’s sake go.”

“I’ll tell you how to cure it,” said he, tenderly; “honey is the medicine; put that sweet finger to your own sweeter lip—­and, afterwards, I’ll carry home the wound.”

“But not the medicine, now,” said she, and, snatching her hand from his, with light, fearful steps, she fled up the garden and disappeared.

Such, gentle reader, were the circumstances which brought our young and artless lovers together in the black twilight of the singularly awful and ominous evening which we have already described.

Connor, on reaching the appointed spot, sat down; but his impatience soon overcame him; and, while hurrying to and fro, under the alders, he asked himself in what was this wild but rapturous attachment to terminate?  That the proud Bodagh, and his prouder wife, would never suffer their beautiful daughter, the heiress of all their wealth, to marry the son of Fardorougha, the miser, was an axiom, the truth of which pressed upon his heart with a deadly weight.  On the other hand, would his father, or rather could he, change his nature so far as to establish him in life, provided Una and he were united without the consent of her parents?  Alas! he knew his father’s parsimony too well; and, on either hand, he was met by difficulties that appeared to him to be insurmountable.  But again came the delightful and ecstatic consciousness, that, let their parents act as they might, Una’s heart and his were bound to each other by ties which, only to think of, was rapture.  In the midst of these reflections, he heard her light foot approach, but with a step more slow and melancholy than he could have expected from the ardor of their love.

When she approached, the twilight was just sufficient to enable him to perceive that her face was pale, and tinged apparently with melancholy, if not with sorrow.  After the first salutations were over, he was proceeding to inquire into the cause of her depression, when, to his utter surprise, she placed her hands upon her face, and burst into a fit of grief.