Kate Vernon, Vol. 1 (of 3)

I took Kate's hand, I ventured to hold it in both of mine – I could utter no word, but gazed long and silently into her sweet, calm eyes: she looked pale, but seemed perfectly composed.

"God bless you, Captain Egerton, and make you happy," she said, in a somewhat unsteady voice.

I turned and left the room without a word!

"Christ shield ye from harm, captin jewil," sobbed Mrs. O'Toole, "don't be down-hearted entirely, sure there's many a prayer goes wid ye, an' the coldest hour is the hour before daydawn. Holy Mary keep ye, an' don't forget the letther for me poor boy."

"Nurse, dear Nurse, good-bye, I'll take care of your son."

And my last glimpse of the Priory gate showed me Mrs. O'Toole with her apron to her eyes, and Cormac looking uneasily after me.

Another day, and I stood at the stern of the steamer which was rapidly cleaving the smooth waters, straining my eyes after the quickly vanishing land, my arms folded tightly on my chest, as if to press down the bitterness that swelled my heart into the stern stillness of manful endurance: all the events of the last four months, even to their minutiæ, stood clear before me; and as the distant outline of the land I was leaving – probably for ever – faded from my sight, and I felt the keen pang that in leaving it I left my all, which has rent many a heart, Kate Vernon's words flashed back upon my memory – "I am quite sure that a stedfast resignation to what you have brought upon yourself; an unmurmuring struggle to retrieve, will work its own cure;" and I slowly turned to go below, feeling how great was the change wrought in me since life presented no deeper ill than an unlucky change of quarters.

END OF VOL. I