“It is true that I love you, and if our parents could think as we do, Connor, how easy it would be for them to make us happy, but—­”

“It’s too soon, Una; it’s too soon to spake of that.  Happy! don’t we love one another?  Isn’t that happiness?  Who or what can deprive us of that?  We are happy without them; we can be happy in spite of them; oh, my own fair girl! sweet, sweet life of my life, and heart of my heart!  Heaven—­heaven itself would be no heaven to me, if you weren’t with me!”

“Don’t say that, Connor dear; it’s wrong.  Let us not forget what is due to religion, if we expect our love to prosper.  You may think this strange from one that has acted contrary to religion in coming to meet you against the will and knowledge of her parents; but beyond that, dear Connor, I hope I never will go.  But is it true that you’ve loved me so long?”

“It is,” said he; “the second Sunday in May next was three years, I knelt opposite you at mass.  You were on the left hand side of the altar, I was on the right; my eyes were never off you; indeed, you may remember it.”

“I have a good right,” said she, blushing and hiding her face on his shoulder.  “I ought to be ashamed to acknowledge it, an’ me so young at the time; little more than sixteen.  From that day to this, my story has been just your own.  Connor, can you tell me how I found it out but I knew you loved me?”

“Many a thing was to tell you that, Una dear.  Sure my eyes were never off you, whenever you wor near me; an’ wherever you were, there was I certain to be too.  I never missed any public place if I thought you would be at it, an’ that merely for the sake of seein’ you.  An’, now will you tell me why it was that I could ’a sworn you lov’d me?”

“You have answered for us both,” she replied.  “As for me, if I only chance to hear your name mentioned my heart would beat; if the talk was about you I could listen to nothing else, and I often felt the color come and go on my cheek.”

“Una, I never thought I could be born to such happiness.  Now that I know that you love me, I can hardly think that it was love I felt for you all along; it’s wonderful—­it’s wonderful!”

“What is so wonderful?” she inquired.

“Why, the change that I feel since knowin’ that you love me; since I had it from your own lips, it has overcome me—­I’m a child—­I’m anything, anything you choose to make me; it was never love—­it’s only since I found you loved me that my heart’s burnin’ as it is.”

“I’ll make you happyr if I can,” she replied, “and keep you so, I hope.”

“There’s one thing that will make me still happier than I am,” said Connor.

“What is it?  If it’s proper and right I’ll do it.”

“Promise me that if I live you’ll never marry any one else than me.”

“You wish then to have the promise all on one side,” she replied with a smile and a blush, each as sweet as ever captivated a human heart.