Connor, on reaching the appointed spot, sat down; but his impatience soon overcame him; and, while hurrying to and fro, under the alders, he asked himself in what was this wild but rapturous attachment to terminate? That the proud Bodagh, and his prouder wife, would never suffer their beautiful daughter, the heiress of all their wealth, to marry the son of Fardorougha, the miser, was an axiom, the truth of which pressed upon his heart with a deadly weight. On the other hand, would his father, or rather could he, change his nature so far as to establish him in life, provided Una and he were united without the consent of her parents? Alas! he knew his father's parsimony too well; and, on either hand, he was met by difficulties that appeared to him to be insurmountable. But again came the delightful and ecstatic consciousness, that, let their parents act as they might, Una's heart and his were bound to each other by ties which, only to think of, was rapture. In the midst of these reflections, he heard her light foot approach, but with a step more slow and melancholy than he could have expected from the ardor of their love. When she approached, the twilight was just sufficient to enable him to perceive that her face was pale, and tinged apparently with melancholy, if not with sorrow. After the first salutations were over, he was proceeding to inquire into the cause of her depression, when, to his utter surprise, she placed her hands upon her face, and burst into a fit of grief. Those who have loved need not be told that the most delightful office of that delightful passion is to dry the tears of the beloved one who is dear to us beyond all else that life contains. Connor literally performed this office, and inquired, in a tone so soothing and full of sympathy, why she wept, that her tears for a while only flowed the faster. At length her grief abated, and she was able to reply to him. “You ask me why I am raying,” said the fair young creature; “but, indeed, I cannot tell you. There has been a sinking of the heart upon me during the greater part of this day. When I thought of our meeting I was delighted; but again some heaviness would come over me that I can't account for.” “I know what it is,” replied Connor, “a very simple thing; merely the terrible calm an' blackness of the evenin'. I was sunk myself a little.” “I ought to cry for a better reason,” she returned. “In meeting you I have done--an' am doing--what I ought to be sorry for--that is, a wrong action that my conscience condemns.” “There is nobody perfect, my dear Una,” said Connor; “an' none without their failins; they have little to answer for that have no more than you.” “Don't flatter me,” she replied; “if you love me as you say, never flatter me while you live; I will always speak what I feel, and I hope you'll do the same.”