“That style maybe won't make his wife happy. No, father, it's neither face, nor figure, nor style that I look to, but truth, pure affection, and upright principle; now, I know that Hycy Burke has neither truth, nor affection, nor principle; an' I wondher, besides, that you could think of my ever marrying a man that has already destroyed the happiness of two innocent girls, an' brought desolation, an' sorrow, an' shame upon two happy families. Do you think that I will ever become the wife of a profligate? An' is it you, father, an' still more you, mother, that's a woman, that can urge me to think of joining my fate to that of a man that has neither shame nor principle? I thought that if you didn't respect decency an' truth, and a regard for what is right and proper, that, at all events, you would respect the feelings of your child that was taught their value.” Both parents felt somewhat abashed by the force of the truth and the evident superiority of her character; but in a minute or two her worthy father, from whose dogged obstinacy she inherited the firmness and resolution for which she had ever been remarkable, again returned to the subject. “If Hycy Burke was wild, Kathleen, so was many a good man before him; an' that's no raison but he may turn out well yet, an' a credit to his name, as I have no doubt he will. All that he did was only folly an' indiscretion--we can't be too hard or uncharitable upon our fellow-craytures.” “No,” chimed in her mother, “we can't. Doesn't all the world know that a reformed rake makes a good husband?--an' besides, didn't them two huzzies bring it on themselves?--why didn't they keep from him as they ought? The fault, in such cases, is never all on one side.” Kathleen's brow and face and whole neck became crimson, as her mother, in the worst spirit of a low and degrading ambition, uttered the sentiments we have just written. Hanna had been all this time sitting beside her, with one arm on her shoulder; but Kathleen, now turning round, laid her face on her sister's bosom, and, with a pressure that indicated shame and bitterness of heart, she wept. Hanna returned this melancholy and distressing caress in the same mournful spirit, and both wept together in silence. Gerald Cavanagh was the first who felt something like shame at the rebuke conveyed by this tearful embrace of his pure-hearted and ingenuous daughters, and he said, addressing his wife:-- “We're wrong to defend him, or any one, for the evil he has done, bekaise it can't be defended; but, in the mane time, every day will bring him more sense an' experience, an' he won't repute this work; besides, a wife would settle him down.” “But, father,” said Hanna, now speaking for the first time, “there's one thing that strikes me in the business you're talkin' about, an' it's this--how do you know whether Hycy Burke has any notion, good, bad, or indifferent, of marrying Kathleen?” “Why,” replied her mother, “didn't he write to her upon the subject?”