A faint smile of satisfaction lit up her lover’s features, but this was soon overshadowed by his apprehension for her safety.

Sarah, who had for about a half minute been examining Mave on her part, now started, and exclaimed with flashing eyes, and we may add, a bursting and distracted heart—­

“Well, Mave Sullivan, I have often seen you, but never so well as now.  You have goodness an’ truth in your face.  Oh, it’s a purty face—­a lovely face.  But why do you state a falsehood here—­for what you’ve just said is false; I know it.”

Mave started, and in a moment her pale face and neck were suffused by one burning blush, at the idea of such an imputation.  She looked around her, as if enquiring from all those who were present the nature of the falsehood attributed to her; and then with a calm but firm eye, she asked Sarah what she could mean by such language.

“You’re afther sayin’,” replied Sarah, “that you’re come here to nurse Nancy there.  Now that’s not true, and you know it isn’t.  You come here to nurse young Con Dalton:  and you came to nurse him, bekaise you love him.  No, I don’t blame you for that, but I do for not saying so, without fear or disguise—­for I hate both.”

“That wouldn’t be altogether true either,” replied Mave, “if I said so; for I did come to nurse Nancy, and any others of the family that might stand in need of it.  As to Con, I’m neither ashamed to love him, nor afeard to acknowledge it; and I had no notion of statin’ a falsehood when I said what I did.  I tell you, then, Sarah M’Gowan, that you’ve done me injustice.  If there appeared to be a falsehood in my words, there was none in my heart.”

“That’s truth; I know, I feel that that’s truth,” replied Sarah, quickly; “but oh, how wrong I am,” she exclaimed, “to mention that or anything else here that might distract him!  Ah,” she proceeded, addressing Mave, “I did you injustice—­I feel I did, but don’t be angry with me, for I acknowledge it.”

“Why should I be angry with you?” replied Mave, “you only spoke what you thought, an’ this, by all accounts, is what you always do.”

“Let us talk as little as possible here,” replied Sarah, the sole absorbing object of whose existence lay in Dalton’s recovery.  “I will speak to you on your way home, but not here—­not here;” and while uttering the last words she pointed to Dalton, to intimate that further conversation might disturb him.

“Dear Mave,” observed Mary, now rising from her chair, “you are stayin’ too long; oh, for God’s sake, don’t stop; you can’t dhrame of the danger you’re in.”

“But,” replied Mave, calmly, “you know, Mary, that I came to stop and to do whatever I can do till the family comes round.  You are too feeble to undertake anything, and might only get into a relapse if you attempted it.”

“But, then we have Sarah M’Gowan,” she replied, “who came, as few would—­none livin’ this day, I think, barrin’ yourself and her—­to stay with us, and to do anything that she can do for us all.  May God for ever bless her! for short as the time is, I think she has saved some of our lives—­Condy’s without a doubt.”