sudden, shy offerings to their hero; a "quare bit ave a stone," a "farden me mither giv me," or some uneasy looking fragment of what might once have been a bird's egg. Of sticks, blackthorns and others, I once had an enormous collection brought back to me at various times by Parnell, but these, together with the two riding-whips I had myself given him, were stolen from me some ten years ago, when I was moving from one house to another. The two riding-whips I prized very highly, for Parnell was so pleased {104} when I gave them to him. One was gold-mounted, the other silver-mounted, and each had "C.S.P." engraved upon it. Among my stick collection was one made of horn--a curious thing, carved and inlaid with ivory, sent him by some unknown American admirer. He used this stick on his last journey upstairs from the sitting-room to the bed where he died. In January of 1881, Willie, who had rooms then in Charles Street, Haymarket, came down to Eltham suddenly, very angry indeed with me because he had seen some men watching his lodgings, and imagined that I had engaged a detective to do so. As I had never had an idea of doing anything of the sort I was extremely annoyed, and a violent quarrel was the result. As a matter of fact, the men were watching the upper floor, where a friend of Willie's lived, and this friend's wife afterwards divorced him. All these months, since my first meeting with Mr. Parnell, Willie knew at least that I frequently met him at the House. He had invited him to Eltham himself, though when the visit was first proposed I said my house was too shabby, the children would worry so nervous a man and we had better not break the routine of our (Willie's and my) life (which by then was tacitly accepted as a formal separation of a friendly sort) giving any and every excuse, because of the danger I knew I was not able to withstand. But Willie was blind to the existence of the fierce, bewildering force that was rising within me in answer to call of those passion-haunted eyes, that waking or sleeping never left me. Willie then, as always, was content that what was his, was his for good or ill. He knew {105} that men, in our past life together, had admired me, even that some had loved me; but that was to their own undoing, an impertinence that had very properly recoiled upon their own heads. His wife could not love anyone but himself; perhaps unfortunately she did not even do that, but after all "love" was only a relative term--a little vulgar even, after girlhood had passed, and the mild affection of his own feelings towards her were no doubt reciprocated, in spite of the unfortunate temperamental differences that made constant companionship impossible.