“Pledged and promised to one another.  Bridget, who could believe this?”

“Believe it!  I don’t believe it—­it’s only a schame of the hussy to get him.  Oh, thin, Queen of Heaven this day, but it’s black news to us!”

“John,” said the father, “tell Una to come down to us.”

“Father, I doubt that’s rather a trying task for her.  I wish, you wouldn’t insist.”

“Go off, sir; she must come down immediately, I’ll have it from her own lips, too.”

Without another word of remonstrance the son went to bring her down.  When the brother and sister entered the room, O’Brien still paced the floor.  He stood, and, turning his eyes upon his daughter with severe displeasure, was about to speak, but he appeared to have lost the power of utterance; and, after one or two ineffectual attempts, the big tears fairly rolled down his cheeks.

“See, see,” said the mother, “see what you have brought us to.  Is it thrue that you’re promised to Fardorougha’s son?”

Una tottered over to a chair, and the blood left her cheeks; her lips became dry, and she gasped for breath.

“Why, don’t you think it worth your while to answer me?” continued the mother.

The daughter gave a look of deep distress and supplication at her brother; but when she perceived her father in tears, her head sank down upon her bosom.

“What! what!  Una,” exclaimed the Bodagh, “Una—­” But ere he could complete the question, the timid creature fell senseless upon the floor.

For a long time she lay in that friendly trance, for such, in truth, it was to a delicate being, subjected to an ordeal so painful as that she was called upon to pass through.  We have, indeed, remarked that there is in the young, especially in those of the softer sex, a feeling of terror, and shame, and confusion, when called upon by their parents to disclose a forbidden passion, that renders its avowal perhaps the most formidable task which the young heart can undergo.  It is a fearful trial for the youthful, and one which parents ought to conduct with surpassing delicacy and tenderness, unless they wish to drive the ingenuous spirit into the first steps of falsehood and deceit.

“Father,” said John, “I think you may rest satisfied with what you witness; and I am sure it cannot make you or mother happy to see poor Una miserable.”

Una, who had been during the greater part of her swoon supported in her weeping and alarmed mother’s arms, now opened her eyes, and, after casting an affrighted look about the room, she hid her face in her mother’s bosom, and exclaimed, as distinctly as the violence of sobbing grief would permit her: 

“Oh, mother dear, have pity on me! bring me up stairs and I will tell you.”

“I do, I do pity you,” said the mother, kissing her; “I know you’ll be a good girl yet, Oona.”

“Una,” said her father, placing his hand gently on her shoulder, “was I ever harsh to you, or did I—­”