She smiled faintly and sorrowfully in her mother’s face, and said, “Mother, I didn’t know that.”  After which she got up, and proceeding to the bed, she fell upon his body, kissed his lips, and indulged in a wild and heart-breaking wail of grief.  This evidently afforded her relief, for she now became more calm and collected.

“Mother,” said she, “I must go.”

“Why, sure you won’t leave us, Nannie?” replied the other with affectionate alarm.

“O, I must go,” she repeated; “bring me the children till I see them once—­Frank first.”

The mother accordingly brought them to her, one by one, when she stooped down and kissed them in turn, not without bitter tears, whilst they, poor things, were all in an uproar of sorrow.  She then approached her mother, threw herself in her arms, and again wept wildly for a time, as did that afflicted mother along with her.

“Mother, farewell,” said she at length—­“farewell; think of me when I am far away—­think of your unfortunate Nannie, and let every one that hears of my misfortune think of all the misery and all the crime that may come from one false and unguarded step.”

“O, Nannie darling,” replied her mother, “don’t desert us now; sure you wouldn’t desert your mother now, Nannie?”

“If my life could make you easy or happy, mother, I could give it for your sake, worthless now and unhappy as it is; but I am going to a far country, where my shame and the misfortunes I have caused will never be known.  I must go, for if I lived here, my disgrace would always be before you and myself; then I would soon die, and I am not yet fit for death.”

With these words the unhappy girl passed out of the house, and was never after that night seen or heard of, but once, in that part of the country.

In the meantime that most pitiable mother, whose afflicted heart could only alternate from one piercing sorrow to another, sat down once more, and poured forth a torrent of grief for her unhappy daughter, whom she feared, she would never see again.

Those who were present, now that the distressing scene which we have attempted to describe was over, began to chat together with more freedom.

“Tom Kennedy,” said one of them, accosting a good-natured young fellow, with a clear, pleasant eye, “how are all your family at Beech Grove?  Ould Goodwin and his pretty daughter ought to feel themselves in good spirits after gaining the lawsuit in the case of Mr. Hamilton’s will.  They bate the Lindsays all to sticks.”

“And why not,” replied Kennedy; “who had a betther right to dispose of his property than the man that owned it? and, indeed, if any one livin’ desarved it from another, Miss Alice did from him.  She nearly brought herself to death’s door, in attending upon and nursing her sister, as she called poor Miss Agnes; and, as for her grief at her death, I never saw anything like it, except “—­he added, looking at the unfortunate widow—­“where there was blood relationship.”