Such being their respective feelings, what could be the result of their romantic rencounter? They were both young, generous children of nature, with hearts fraught with the unhacknied feelings of youth and inexperience: they had drunk in sentiment with the sublimities of their mountain homes, and were fitted for higher things than the vulgar interchange of animosity and contempt. Of this they soon were conscious, and they did not separate until the stars began to burn above them, and not even then, before they had made arrangements for at least another--one more secret interview. The islet possessed a beautiful fitness for their trysting place, as being accessible from either side, and little obnoxious to observation; and many a moonlight meeting--for the _one_ was inevitably multiplied--had these children of hostile fathers, perchance on the very spot on which my eyes now rested, and the unbroken stillness around had echoed to their gladsome greetings or their faltering farewells. Neither dared to divulge an intercourse that would have stirred to frenzy the treasured rancour of their respective parents, each of whom would doubtless have preferred a connexion with a blackamoor--if such were then in circulation--to their doing such grievous despite to that ancient feud which as an heirloom had been transmitted from ancestors whose very names they scarcely knew. M’Diarmod the Dark-faced was at best but a gentle tiger even to his only child; and though his stern cast-iron countenance would now and then relax beneath her artless blandishments, yet even with the lovely vision at his side, he would often grimly deplore that she had not been a son, to uphold the name and inherit the headship of the clan, which on his demise would probably pass from its lineal course; and when he heard of the bold bearing of the heir of O’Rourke, he thought he read therein the downfall of the M’Diarmods when he their chief was gone. With such ill-smothered feelings of discontent he could not but in some measure repulse the filial regards of Norah, and thus the confiding submission that would have sprung to meet the endearments of his love, was gradually refused to the inconsistencies of his caprice; and the maiden in her intercourse with her proscribed lover rarely thought of her father, except as one from whom it should be diligently concealed.