And yet the mother when she looked at her daughter almost persuaded herself that it need not be so.  The girl was very lovely,—­so lovely that, were she but seen, men would quarrel for her as to who should have her in his keeping.  Such beauty, such life, such capability for giving and receiving enjoyment could not have been intended to wither on a lone cliff over the Atlantic!  There must be fault somewhere.  But yet to live had been the first necessity; and life in cities, among the haunts of men, had been impossible with such means as this woman possessed.  When she had called her daughter to her, and had sought peace under the roof which her friend the priest had found for her, peace and a roof to shelter her had been the extent of her desires.  To be at rest, and independent, with her child within her arms, had been all that the woman asked of the gods.  For herself it sufficed.  For herself she was able to acknowledge that the rest which she had at least obtained was infinitely preferable to the unrest of her past life.  But she soon learned,—­as she had not expected to learn before she made the experiment,—­that that which was to her peace, was to her daughter life within a tomb.  “Mother, is it always to be like this?”

Had her child not carried the weight of good blood, had some small grocer or country farmer been her father, she might have come down to the neighbouring town of Ennistimon, and found a fitting mate there.  Would it not have been better so?  From that weight of good blood,—­or gift, if it please us to call it,—­what advantage would ever come to her girl?  It can not really be that all those who swarm in the world below the bar of gentlehood are less blessed, or intended to be less blessed, than the few who float in the higher air.  As to real blessedness, does it not come from fitness to the outer life and a sense of duty that shall produce such fitness?  Does any one believe that the Countess has a greater share of happiness than the grocer’s wife, or is less subject to the miseries which flesh inherits?  But such matters cannot be changed by the will.  This woman could not bid her daughter go and meet the butcher’s son on equal terms, or seek her friends among the milliners of the neighbouring town.  The burden had been imposed and must be borne, even though it isolated them from all the world.

“Mother, is it always to be like this?” Of course the mother knew what was needed.  It was needed that the girl should go out into the world and pair, that she should find some shoulder on which she might lean, some arm that would be strong to surround her, the heart of some man and the work of some man to which she might devote herself.  The girl, when she asked her question, did not know this,—­but the mother knew it.  The mother looked at her child and said that of all living creatures her child was surely the loveliest.  Was it not fit that she should go forth and be loved;—­that she should at any rate go forth and take her chance