At this moment Mave and her mother entered, and after looking towards the bed on which she lay, they inquired in a whisper, from her attendant how she was.

The woman pointed hopelessly to her own head, and then looked significantly at Sarah, as if to intimate that her brain was then unsettled.

“There’s something wrong here,” she added, in an under tone, and touching her head, “especially since I tould her what had happened.”

“Is she acquainted with everything?” asked her mother.

“She is,” replied the other; “she knows that her father is to die on Friday an’ that you swore agin’ him.”

“But what on earth,” said Mave, “could make you be so mad as to let her know anything of that kind?”

“Why, she sent me to get word,” replied the simple creature, “and you wouldn’t have me tell her a lie, an’ the poor girl on her death-bed, I’m afeard.”

Her mother went over and stood opposite where she lay, that is, near the foot of her bed, and putting one hand under her chin, looked at her long and steadily.  Mave went to her side and taking her hand gently up, kissed it, and wept quietly, but bitterly.

It was, indeed, impossible to look upon her without a feeling of deep and extraordinary interest.  Her singularly youthful aspect—­her surprising beauty, to which disease and suffering had given a character of purity and tenderness almost etherial—­the natural symmetry and elegance of her very arms and hands—­the wonderful whiteness of her skin, which contrasted so strikingly with the raven black of her glossy hair, and the soul of thought and feeling which lay obviously expressed by the long silken eye-lashes of her closed eyes—­all, when taken in at a glance, were calculated to impress a beholder with love, and sympathy, and tenderness, such as no human heart could resist.

Mave, on glancing at her mother, saw a few tears stealing, as it were, down her cheeks.

“I wish to God, my dear daughter,” exclaimed the latter, in a low voice, “that I had never seen your face, lovely as it is, an’ it surely would be betther for yourself that you had never been born.”

She then passed to the bed-side, and taking Mave’s place, who withdrew, she stooped down, and placing her lips upon Sarah’s white broad forehead, exclaimed—­“May God bless you, my dear daughter, is the heart-felt prayer of your unhappy mother!”

Sarah suddenly opened her eyes, and started.—­“What is wrong?  There is something wrong.  Didn’t I hear some one callin’ me daughter?  Here’s a strange woman—­Charley Hanlon’s aunt—­Biddy, come here!”

“Well, acushla, here I am—­keep yourself quiet, achora—­what is it?”

“Didn’t you tell me that my mother swore my father’s life away?”

“It’s what they say,” replied the matter-of-fact nurse.