"Oh, Daisy!" he exclaimed so scornfully that I immediately repented, "you think me indifferent, because, not to add to your grief, I am silent on mine. You speak of your sorrow; you do not ask yourself what will be to me the cost of this separation. How shall I return alone to the home we left together this morning? What shall I say to Kate--to Kate who reared you--when she asks me for her child'? Why here am I actually giving up to a total stranger, the very thing I most long to keep; here am I taking you from my home, and leading you to the home of another; here am I placing you in the very circumstances that are likely to make me lose you for ever. You are young, Daisy, very young. You will be flattered, caressed, seduced out of old affections, almost unconsciously; and I shall not be there to guard my rights. I know that absence, time, the world will conspire to efface me from your heart; I know it, and yet I accept this." "But why so?" I asked; "why so?" "Because," he replied, with a fixed look, and compressed lips, "because to keep even you, Daisy, with the sense of my own engrossing selfishness, violated honour and trust betrayed upon me, would be gall and wormwood to my soul." "But it is not you who keep me, Cornelius, if it is I who insist on remaining; if I disobey you, brave your authority, say you had no right to pledge yourself for me, and that, whether you like it or not, I will stay with Kate, what can you do then?" His colour came and went; he turned upon me a strange, troubled look; his lip quivered; he took my hand in his, and almost crushed it, then dropped it as if it were fire. "Tempt me not," he said, in a low tone, turning away his look as he spoke. "Tempt me not, for God's sake. I am but flesh and blood--I cannot always answer for myself. There are bounds to self-denial, and limits to self-subjection." I did not answer, but I passed my arm around his neck, and I laid my head on his shoulder. "Daisy, Daisy, my child!" he exclaimed, "do you know what you are doing? Do you know what it is you want to make me do?" I did not reply; but I wept and sobbed freely. He looked at me one moment, turned away, looked again, and turned away no more. He pressed me to his heart--he bent over me--he hushed my grief--he kissed away my tears. "Be it so," he said, desperately. "I have resisted your dangerous tenderness, I cannot resist your grief. Yes, I will break my word to the living, my duty to the dead. I will let it be said of Cornelius O'Reilly, to gratify his own desires he betrayed his trust--he meanly deceived the ignorant affection of the child he had reared. Let those alone dare judge me who, like me, have been tempted." "Then you do keep me!" I exclaimed, laughing and crying for joy.