“I said before that I have no hope, Miss Folliard. I shall carry with me my love of you through life; it is my first, and I feel it will be my last—it will be the melancholy light that will burn in the sepulchre of my heart to show your image there. And now, Miss Folliard, I will bid you farewell. Your father has proffered me hospitality, but I have not strength nor resolution to accept it. You now know my secret—a hopeless passion.”
“Reilly,” she replied, weeping bitterly, “our acquaintance has been short—we have not seen much of each other, yet I will not deny that I believe you to be all that any female heart could—pardon me, I am without experience—I know not much of the world. You have travelled, papa told me last night; I do not wish that you should be unhappy, and, least of all, that I, who owe you so much, should be the occasion of it. No, you talk of a hopeless passion. I know not what I ought to say—but to the preserver of my father's life, and, probably my own honor, I will say, be not—but why should love be separated from truth?” she said—“No, Reilly, be not hopeless.”
“Oh,” replied Reilly, who had gone over near her, “but my soul will not be satisfied without a stronger affirmation. This moment is the great crisis of my life and happiness. I love you beyond all the power of language or expression. You tremble, dear Miss Folliard, and you weep; let me wipe those precious tears away. Oh, would to God that you loved me!”
He caught her hand—it was not withdrawn—he pressed it as he had done the evening before. The pressure was returned—his voice melted into tenderness that was contagious and irresistible: “Say, dearest Helen, star of my life and of my fate, oh, only say that I am not indifferent to you.”
They were both standing near the chimney-piece as he spoke—“only say,” he repeated, “that I am not indifferent to you.”
“Well, then,” she replied, “you are not indifferent to me.”
“One admission more, my dearest life, and I am happy forever. You love me? say it, dearest, say it—or, stay, whisper it, whisper it—you love me!”
“I do,” she whispered in a burst of tears.
CHAPTER IV.—His Rival makes his Appearance, and its Consequences
—A Sapient Project for our Hero's Conversion
We will not attempt to describe the tumult of delight which agitated Reilly's heart on his way home, after this tender interview with the most celebrated Irish beauty of that period. The term Cooleen Bawn, in native Irish, has two meanings, both of which were justly applied to her, and met in her person. It signifies fair locks, or, as it may be pronounced fair girl; and in either sense is peculiarly applicable to a blonde beauty, which she was. The name of Cooleen Bawn was applied to her by the populace, whose talent for finding out and bestowing epithets indicative either of personal beauty or deformity, or of the qualities of the mind or character, be they good or evil, is, in Ireland, singularly felicitous. In the higher ranks, however, she was known as “The Lily of the Plains of Boyne,” and as such she was toasted by all parties, not only in her own native county, but throughout Ireland, and at the viceregal entertainments in the Castle of Dublin. At the time of which we write, the penal laws were in operation against the Roman Catholic population of the country, and her father, a good-hearted man by nature, was wordy and violent by prejudice, and yet secretly kind and friendly to many of that unhappy creed, though by no means to all. It was well known, however, that in every thing that was generous and good in his character, or in the discharge of his public duties as a magistrate, he was chiefly influenced by the benevolent and liberal principles of his daughter, who was a general advocate for the oppressed, and to whom, moreover, he could deny nothing. This accounted for her popularity, as it does for the extraordinary veneration and affection with which her name and misfortunes are mentioned down to the present day. The worst point in her father's character was that he never could be prevailed on to forgive an injury, or, at least, any act that he conceived to be such, a weakness or a vice which was the means of all his angelic and lovely daughter's calamities.
Reilly, though full of fervor and enthusiasm, was yet by no means deficient in strong sense. On his way home he began to ask himself in what this overwhelming passion for Cooleen Bawn must end. His religion, he was well aware, placed an impassable gulf between them. Was it then generous or honorable in him to abuse the confidence and hospitality of her father by engaging the affections of a daughter, on whose welfare his whole happiness was placed, and to whom, moreover, he could not, without committing an act of apostasy that he abhorred, ever be united as a husband? Reason and prudence, moreover, suggested to him the danger of his position, as well as the ungenerous nature of his conduct to the grateful and trusting father. But, away with reason and prudence—away with everything but love. The rapture of his heart triumphed over every argument; and, come weal or woe, he resolved to win the far-famed “Star of Connaught,” another epithet which she derived from her wonderful and extraordinary beauty.
On approaching his own house he met a woman named Mary Mahon, whose character of a fortune-teller was extraordinary in the country, and whose predictions, come from what source they might, had gained her a reputation which filled the common mind with awe and fear.
“Well, Mary,” said he, “what news from futurity? And, by the way, where is futurity? Because if you don't know,” he proceeded, laughing, “I think I could tell you.”
“Well,” replied Mary, “let me hear it. Where is it, Mr. Reilly?”
“Why,” he replied, “just at the point of your own nose, Mary, and you must admit it is not a very long one; pure Milesian, Mary; a good deal of the saddle in its shape.”
The woman stood and looked at him for a few moments.
“My nose may be short,” she replied, “but shorter will be the course of your happiness.”
“Well, Mary,” he said, “I think as regards my happiness that you know as little of it as I do myself. If you tell me any thing that has passed, I may give you some credit for the future, but not otherwise.”
“Do you wish to have your fortune tould, then,” she asked, “upon them terms?”
“Come, then, I don't care if I do. What has happened me, for instance, within the last forty-eight hours?”
“That has happened you within the last forty-eight hours that will make her you love the pity of the world before her time. I see how it will happen, for the complaint I speak of is in the family. A living death she will have, and you yourself during the same time will have little less.”
“But what has happened me, Mary?”
“I needn't tell you—you know—it. A proud heart, and a joyful heart, and a lovin' heart, you carry now, but it will be a broken heart before long.”
“Why, Mary, this is an evil prophecy; have you nothing good to foretell?”
“If it's a satisfaction to you to know, I will tell you: her love for you is as strong, and stronger, than death itself; and it is the suffering of what is worse than death, Willy Reilly, that will unite you both at last.”
Reilly started, and after a pause, in which he took it for granted that Mary spoke merely from one of those shrewd conjectures which practised impostors are so frequently in the habit of hazarding, replied, “That won't do, Mary; you have told me nothing yet that has happened within the last forty-eight hours. I deny the truth of what you say.”
“It won't be long so, then,