and tender love which had made the sunshine of poor Helen's life, and with the gentle, fond caresses which had always soothed and cheered her-until now.

There beside her, but unnoticed for the first time; while over the patient face, and in the far-off, dying eyes, there broke a smile of greeting.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.

Shakespeare's Sonnets.

HE brown monotony of the bog was made

THE

dreary indeed by the steady downpour of Autumn rain; yet old Kitty stood looking out upon it from the kitchen window at Traveere, when she might have looked into the turf fire, glowing frankly and cheerily in the open grate behind her. It was that quiet hour of the afternoon when the day's active work is done, and it is too near tea-time to begin evening tasks. The kettle hung over the fire, ready for Kitty's solitary tea; but no cup and saucer were set, and the thin cake of oaten meal, tilted before the fire on an iron tray, was burning slowly, as no good Irish housekeeper can bear to see her "meal-cake" burn. But then truly

Kitty did not see it, for her eyes-dimmed now by something more than age-saw only the wet, brown scene beyond the little blurred panes of the new window.

"Rainin', rainin'; iver an' alwis rainin!" she muttered, rubbing one spot in the glass angrily with her closed fist. 66 Long afore wan power's o'er the nixt begins. It 'ud be this wither they'll be havin' in Purgory, I'm bound, power sowls, wid niver a dthry clo' to put on too. An' the bairn mebbe out in the cowld an' wit, an' wid the face of hurr that whitesome, loike a new-led egg; yit, furr the purthisomeness of hurr, it's in a goulden chart she mit be ridin', an' a will-to-do husban' arrm in arrm wid her, no liss. Howly Sint Pathrick! now who be's comin' here the day?"

For a moment the old woman's face had lighted up with expectation, as she pressed it to the glass; but in the next she had recognised the small, well-cloaked figure under the dripping umbrella.

"An' sorra a wan ilse," she muttered, as she opened the door to Miss Pennington. "No-no news," said Celia, in haste to say it as soon as she met Kitty. "No news; but one cannot always stay in the house, even in snch

weather as this. So I came to ask you how you are. Mr. Foster is talking with Breen, and will come in for me presently. What a nice fire!".

"An' much usesomeness it be's to kape a dacent bit o' fire now at all," grumbled Kitty, as she took Celia's cloak from her, "an' that bairn niver to set hurr fit back on the sod o' ould Ireland agin at all to see it! It's aisy enough to starrve in thim places beyant the say; an' it's starrvin' she'll be the day, an' wit as a wave, glory to God!"

"Are you better yourself, Kitty?" inquired Celia, in her sedate, thoughtful way; but flinching a little from that other subject.

"I be's will enough in meself, Miss Pinninton; it be's me fit achin' frum the standin' of me, lookin' out an' niver seein' that blissed cheeld. Dade, on this day they be achin' that sharrpsomely that I don' know I've anny fit on me at all."

"Then papa's recipe didn't cure your feet, Kitty?"

"Oh, the resate!" returned Kitty, with a prompt and generous air of exoneration of all blame from the sender of it, "is will enough. It cured 'em quoite a good deal, me dear; but

still"-honestly—" not much, at all. Now, ye must sit here a bit, sure, whither the gintleman comes furr ye or not. It'll be weeks, an' days, an' hours sin ye iver be here agin, mebbe."

66

Yes, we go to-morrow." Celia was sitting beside the fire, gazing into it; and did not raise her eyes to meet Kitty's shrewd, pleased glance.

"An' ye'll some o' ye foind me bairn this toime?"

"I wish-oh, how I wish we could!"

"Ye're missin' hurr yerself," remarked Kitty, looking down upon the girl's grave face and listless attitude. "I've not'ced it iver sin' ye come back-all ov ye, too. Folks wander over it now an' thin, sayin' sich nonsinse 'bout Miss Nora bein' ongratyful to ye! She, that 'ud nurrse up a broken ligged cat, loike its own mither; an' it's meself that's sin her do it."

"Does anyone say she is ungrateful, Kitty ?” asked Celia, looking up in surprise. "I never heard any one here utter a word against Nora, even through all this mystery of her disappearance."

"Thin ye wurr locky," observed Kitty,