Another vivid picture I have of this young girl is a gloomier and more impressive one. I cannot tell why I was chosen for that drive. I suppose it was because I looked so delicate and unhappy that my stepfather insisted on having me. He drove a pair of spirited horses, and I sat opposite my mother and the dark young girl. She did not smile once that day, and the extreme sadness of her face riveted my attention. I thought I had never seen any one so beautiful and interesting, and I wondered why her eyes kept continually filling with tears. She and my mother whispered mysteriously from time to time, and the disconnected words that reached my ears were no enlightenment for my puzzled brain. Ordinarily I was too dreamy or too excited to have much curiosity for my fellows. I preferred my own thoughts to speculations upon creatures so dull and undiverting as big people. But this day it was different. A brilliant young lady in long dresses, with a glittering ring upon her finger, whom my parents treated with every kindness and consideration, could be just as miserable apparently as a small neglected girl. It was truly a wonderful discovery. We drove along the Kilmainham road, I now know, and as we went farther north, the pretty girl's tears flowed more freely, only she did not cry as we children cry. She bit her lips, and every moment thrust her handkerchief angrily into her eyes. My mother seemed to scold her for having wished to come that way, and I thought wanted to divert her attention from something the girl was evidently anxious to see. We stopped near a large building, and there was my stepfather turned towards us and talking a strange jargon. From dint of puzzling over each word, I arrived at the extraordinary conclusion that somebody this young girl loved was in prison, that it was not wicked apparently to be locked up in prison, and that the woodwork they were gazing at, my stepfather with his hat in his hand, was something bad men were getting ready for her friend's destruction. The young girl stared up at the woodwork with streaming passionate eyes, and then buried her face in her handkerchief, and rocked from side to side in a dreadful way. We were driving on, and I gazed up to see what my stepfather was doing. He, too, was wiping away tears, and his hat was right down upon his eyes. The mystery was solved years afterward. This girl was engaged to a political prisoner recently condemned to death. My mother used to take her to see him at Kilmainham Jail, and she had insisted on being driven round by the prison the day before the execution.