And then the hate that followed him to the grave turned to the woman he had loved, to vent upon her its baffled spleen; not considering that such a man as he would keep the heart of his wife as closely in death as he had kept it in life, so closely that none could come near it, so secretly that none could find the way to plant therein a sting. And so for these more than twenty-two years, I, his wife, have lived upon memories so happy and so precious that, after time had brought back some meaning to my life, I took a certain pleasure in reading all men had to say of him whom they so little knew. Never in all the "lives," "articles," or "appreciations" I read had there been one that could say--or one that desired to say--that Parnell was not a man who stands out sharp and clear from other men for good or ill. But now, after all these years, one of Parnell's erstwhile followers has arisen to explain to another generation that Parnell was not really such a man as this, that he {x} was one of Ireland's eternal failures. One who held her dear indeed, but one who balanced her welfare against the clutches of a light o' love with all the foolishness of callow degeneracy, so fondly imagined chivalry by the weak. Not a man who gave his country his whole life, and found the peace and courage of that life in the heart of the woman he loved. No, that is how a man lives and loves, whether in secret or before the whole world. That is how Parnell lived and loved, and now after these long years I break my silence lest the unmanly echo of excuse given forth by Mr. O'Brien in an age that loves excuse may cling about the name of the man I loved. It is a very poignant pain to me to give to the world any account of the sacred happiness of eleven years of my life and of the agony of sorrow that once seemed too great to bear; but I have borne it, and I am so near him now that I fear to leave near the name of that proud spirit the taint of excuse that he loathed. Parnell never posed as "rather the victim than the destroyer of a happy home," as Mr. O'Brien suggested in the _Cork Free Press_ of last year, and he maintained to the last day of his life that he suffered no "dishonour and discredit" in making the woman he loved his own.