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nionship. There was one, and one only, who, from a coincidence of rank and situation, appeared to sympathise with her deserted state: she was a Catholic wife, and married to a Protestant. Monica Clifford, the wife of Edmund Clifford, of Rosegarland, an indulgent and beloved landlord of great estates, kind almost to a fault, and generous to profusion. They lived happily, as the term is often understood: Monica had her chapel, her priest and festival services, and her children were nurtured in the Church of Rome. Though she never attempted to win over Mr. Clifford to her own religion, yet her influence was too much like a new religion to his private life. She was indifferent to the place where he adored, so long as his disposition was under her control. Whilst they were immersed in the splendors of gaiety, and whilst the piety of both languished in the vicissitudes of pleasure, Mr. Clifford thought little of his wife's devotions. He saw that she graced the rank to which she had been elevated-that she was fascinating and beautiful. Though he had married her a friendless orphan, she had a dowry from Nature. She was one of those who find a mean

condition strange to their own order of being, and ascend into a firmament apparently high as the heavens above their station, as though they rose on the destinies of intuition. It was too late when, in their retirement by the sea, Mr. Clifford wished to resume the spiritual empire in his house. Insensibly all the old things had become new; and Monica was so fond a wife, so affectionate a mother, that, as years glided away, he had yielded, slowly and imperceptibly, the direction of his affairs to one whose affection made her supreme. Nor was this power, during the years of their quiet life at Rosegarland, injudiciously exerted. When Monica received those who were of one blood with her husband, she never remembered that they were not of one faith with herself. Her confessor was a kind-hearted old man, who had that softness of manner which is peculiar to age in almost every religion. He led a life so serene and guiltless that his very death seemed only a gentle transition from his peaceful walk in the calm and holy earth to a state of sinless purity and peace. His successor was Innocent Trentham.

A rapid change was produced by his appoint

ment to the office of spiritual master of the house. Old customs, in which Protestant and Roman Catholic had mingled together as men of the same country and village, were forbidden, and fell into decay. A rigid discipline was introduced into the chamber and chapel; the merry hall was silent-the loud laugh a deadly sin. The dim monastic spirit of obscure times was revived in all its imperial superstitions, and the gay, cheerful, happy Monica, became melancholy and unhappy. In vain Mr. Clifford would have stemmed the flood of these sad presages. He looked upon his children-he called unto them, but they would not dance;-he mourned, but they would not weep with him. He felt how cold and desolate a thing it is to be the father of a family, and yet never see the spring-beam of joy lighted at his approach in the blue eyes of his children-never to receive an unbidden caress-never to see his boys coming, with their pious and touching love, to ask his blessing. He felt how much is lost to him who is indeed the head and father of the family, but not the defender of its faith.

Mrs. Clifford was so much changed from what she once had been and once wished ever to be,

that, in her regard to Emily, she was influenced by the similarity of their married state, rather than by any community of feeling with the English stranger. Emily felt, however, a difference of manner, by which Monica became instantly endeared; and yet it is singular, that after she had told the sorrows of her bridal to Mrs. Clifford, and dashed into her bosom the overflowing of her own deep and secret misery, she thought even upon this confidence with a boding sadness. There is no twilight in the friendship of the daughters of Ireland. If they love, they love instantly, without experience of the truth and sincerity in which they so prophetically confide; and if they change, it is as suddenly. Affection sets without indifference; and the first dim suspicion has the effect of a cold and eternal forgetfulness. Trusting earlytrusting deeply-to them the memory of being deceived would be intolerable; and they give not, to the insincerity of one who was dear, an honorable repose in the tomb of their regrets. Emily had observed this, and felt that this circumstance, which adds to the intensity and brightness of human friendship, must also diminish its security.

CHAPTER VI.

THE morning of the twentieth of May rose slow and dusky over the ocean, and the clouds cast over the eastern horizon of the Atlantic a sullen and mourning gloom; the dawn lingered, and when darkness had gone to its repose, like a winter-bird far from the sun's meridian, the light descended reluctantly from heaven, and town, and tree, and flower, and the plaining river lay silent in the posthumous shadows of the night. At length, at a dim and uncertain distance, the dreamy flashes of the orient tinged the billows with purple, as they danced like sea-fairies over the distant rocks, and then disappeared with the illumined and receding tide.

The town of Wexford at that dawn was unusually still; the heavy tread of banded

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