political business which brought him to the head-office of the League. Here, as we say, he heard of the Morony case, and was empowered to give the family what relief he thought proper, pending the result of the application for Pat's release. Maurice accepted the commission with the utmost eagerness. Why? Because he had resolved never to see Norah more!

During the long hours in which he had lain. alone and in pain in the hotel at Springthorpe, he had reviewed her conduct a thousand times over, without finding a single loophole of escape from the certainty that she loved Reid Summers. And, in truth, it was impossible for him to come to any other conclusion with such overwhelming evidence in its favour. Therefore, he had resolved manfully to break his chains and quit Ireland without seeing her. He would telegraph to Miles to meet him and bid him good-bye at Queenstown, and he would make straight from his home for that port. And this manful re

solve made him grasp eagerly at a commission which might give him one more chance of seeing her! He would not go to Clonard; of course not. But he might meet her accidentally in the neighbourhood!

25

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A MYSTERIOUS MISSION.

A long, long kiss, the kiss of youth and love.-BYRON.

WE shall not undertake to say that, if Maurice had not met Norah accidentally in the neighbourhood, he would have kept to his resolution toavoid Clonard. The eagerness of the moth to singe its wings grows the more frenzied as it nears the flame; and we are not at all sure that Maurice could have resisted a desperate impulse to rush upon his certain fate on finding himself within a bowshot of Norah. He would, of course, have disguised this weakness to himself (if he had yielded to it) under the fear of offending Miles by passing his very gate without calling. But he was spared the humiliation of breaking once again his resolution of avoiding

Norah by the accidental meeting he had hoped for in the background of the mind, where, as in a subsoil, the seeds which strike and spring and bear fruit are generally hidden.

Norah, having brought what comfort and comforts she could to the Marony household, was returning without, for a wonder, a single thought of Maurice in her mind. The hopeless wretchedness of the kindly and patient people all round oppressed her with the weight and horror and sense of helplessness of a nightmare. What little she could do (and all she could she did) to relieve them seemed but

Upon the rack of this tough world

To stretch them out longer.

And in her present depressed and nervous state their unmitigable misery weighed upon her with tenfold force. Especially did the gaunt horror

of

poor Mrs. Morony's dead face, which she had to gaze upon on pain of giving deep offence,

haunt her in the darkening twilight with an ever

deepening terror, till she feared to look back, or on either side, or even up and straight before her, so utterly unstrung was she. She sped homewards, rather running than walking, with the ground a few feet in advance, so that she almost ran against Maurice before she was aware of anyone's approach.

her eyes upon

'Norah !'

Any sudden sound would have startled her in her present unnerved state. She stopped and staggered back, drawing in her breath in a startled sob.

'Maurice!' she answered, in a tone which seemed to him to have a good deal more of fear than of joy in it, as indeed it had, for she was thoroughly scared for a moment.

'You startled me,' she added apologetically, conscious of the unflattering trepidation of her tone. But his mind was so prepossessed with the certainty of her love for Reid Summers, that he construed her confusion and fear at sight of him into a shrinking from the reproach