Then was the last of Moiley's victims marched away under a strong guard, and the rest were left to their own sombre meditations. A stillness of oppression fell on all as Curran, Terence, and Doreen gathered round prostrate Sara. Mr. Cassidy found himself awkwardly situated, for nobody took any notice of him. Vainly his boots creaked, while he coughed behind his hand. Mrs. Gillin was no longer afraid, for she as well as others saw that, the tussle over, the final clearing away of Catholic disabilities was only a matter of time--that even if he launched the thunderbolt at her, in terror of which she had held her peace concerning what she knew of him, it would signify little. With the Union a new era was dawning--all the Catholics felt that--one in which Irish and English interests would grow to be the same in the future, when the sea of blood was bridged--one in which the last vile fragments of the Penal Code must soon be swept away--a relic of the dark ages. Even if Mr. Cassidy were to declare publicly that she took her Protestant daughter with her to the mass, it was possible she might escape tribulation for the enormity. So Mr. Cassidy coughed at her in vain. Curran had never liked him. Doreen knew too much of him. It was a satisfaction to all, himself included, when, with a clumsy excuse, he twirled his fine beaver and backed himself out of the apartment. The old earl, his parent, smirked from his frame upon the new wearer of the coronet. Was the simper more full of meaning than it used to be, or was it merely the limner's conventional flattery? The desire expressed with such solemnity upon his deathbed was accomplished; the wrong was righted now--at last. An unconscious mesmeric sympathy beyond their own volition fixed the gaze of three people upon that portrait of the wicked earl, while the same thought struck each of them in turn. Doreen withdrew her eyes, and they fell on Terence, who nodded, and striding towards his mother's bedchamber, opened the door softly and entered. Though the day was bright and mild there was a large fire on the hearth, before which crouched my lady, wrapped in a loose white wrapper, supported by many pillows. The windows were dimmed to twilight. Shane's favourite hounds, Aileach and Eblana, sat on their haunches with their muzzles on her lap, in wistful expectancy of that which they might never see. She took no notice of the intruder, supposing that it was Doreen, till recognising a heavier footstep and a dreaded voice, she shrank away from him with a moan, as if she had received a blow. 'Mother!' Terence began.