I never saw any beauty in her – that's the truth” – exclaimed one of a group of females, who, lounging around a cottage door, were watching the progress of a young woman toiling slowly up a steep hill, and leading by the hand a very slight child. The cottage was in the valley – and the traveller must have passed the group – for, like the generality of Irish dwellings, it was on the road-side.

“I had the greatest mind in the world to ask her how she had the impudence to wear a bright goold ring on her wedding finger, as if she was an honest woman!” said another.

“And she asking with such mock modesty for a drink of water! I wonder how she relishes water after the fine wines she got used to,” suggested a third.

“It was for all the world like a story written in a book,” observed the first speaker; “how she left the Uphill farm (as good as seven years, come Easter), and no one ever knew exactly who she left it with – only guessing that it must be one of the sporting squireens, that thronged the country about that time. Since the ould gentleman at the Hall died, and the place was pulled down, we have none of the kind going.”

“Small loss,” was the reply; “they were only good at divarshin – for themselves I mean; there was no use in them at all at all, for others.”

“Did you see how white her hands were?” remarked another. “Well, I expect there will be murder of some sort done – for her father will never own her – and it's little she thinks there's a new mother to meet her. I hadn't the heart to tell her her own was dead! – bad as she is.”

“Bad as who is?” exclaimed a clear, but aged voice. “Who is bad, girls, agra? It's a comfort to hear of bad people, so it is; it makes one say – ‘Well, the saints be praised, I'm not as bad as that, any how.’”