Lir was never sad save when the four children went south to the Great Lake to stay awhile with Bove Derg, who in his turn was filled with melancholy when the time came for them to go home again. Nor was Lir ever so proud as when, at the Feast of Age, whenever that festival came to be held at Shee Finnaha, the king and the nobles and the warriors delighted in the beauty and marvellous sweet charm of Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Thus it was that the saying grew: “Fair as the four children of Lir.” But there was a deep shadow behind all this joy. This shadow came out of the heart of Aeifa. In love there is sometimes a poisonous mist. It is what we call Jealousy. At first Aeifa truly loved her step-children. But as the years lapsed, and when Fionula was passing from girlhood into maidenhood, the wife of Lir was filled with anger against the four children. She was bitter at heart because their father loved them with so great a tenderness, and that even the king himself cared for them above all else, and because all the Dedannans had joy of them. The time came when this dull smouldering fire, which she might have overcome had she loved nobly and not ignobly, burst into flame. This flame withered her heart, and rose thence till it obscured her mind. She had something of the old druidical wisdom, but she feared the counter-spells of others wiser than herself. Nevertheless she set herself to learn one or other of the ancient incantations against which even the gods are powerless to avert evil from men and women. While she was brooding thus--and for weeks and even months she lay in the house of Lir as one stricken with some terrible ill--her rage grew till she could no longer endure the sight of her husband or of her step-children. One day she arose and ordered the horses to be yoked to her chariot, and bade a small chosen company to be ready to go with her and the four children to the Great Lake: for, she said, she wished to see Bove Derg, her foster-father, and to take the children to gladden his heart. Lir was sad, and sadder still when he saw the tears in Fionula’s eyes. In vain he asked her why this drifting dew was there instead of the sun-bright laughing glancings he joyed so much to see. She would not answer: for all she could have said was that in a dream she had fore-knowledge of the evil desire of Aeifa to kill her and her brothers. Perhaps, she thought, it was but a dream. She loved honour, too, and would not put her father against his wife because of a visionary thing that came to her in the night. It was when they were in a deep gorge of the hills that Aeifa was overcome by her hatred. Turning to her attendants, she offered them wealth and whatsoever they desired if only they would slay the four children of Lir then and there, inasmuch as these had come between her and her husband, and had therein and in all else made her life a burden to her.