Three venerable women, all of about the same height, and all clad in a strange costume of black gowns and sweeping black vails, their foreheads and chins covered with stiff bands of white linen, and long chains of beads ending in a big silver-gilt cross swinging from their girdles, advanced in single file toward the table--then halted, and bowed slightly. O’Daly and Jerry had risen to their feet upon the instant of this curious apparition, but the The O’Mahony kept his seat, and nodded with amiability. “How d’ do?” he said, lightly. “It’s mighty neighborly of you to run in like this, without knockin’, or standin’ on ceremony. Won’t you sit down, ladies? I guess you can find chairs.” “These are the Ladies of the Hostage’s Tears, your honor,” O’Daly hastened to explain, at the same time energetically winking and motioning to him to stand. But The O’Mahony did not budge. “I’m glad to see you,” he assured the nuns once more. “Take a seat, won’t you? O’Daly here’ll mix you up one o’ these drinks o’ his’n, I’m sure, if you’ll give the word.” “We thank you, O’Mahony,” said the foremost of the aged women, in a deep, solemn voice, but paying no heed to the chairs which O’Daly and Jerry had dragged forward. “We come solely to do obeisance to you as the heir and successor of our pious founder, Diarmid of the Fine Steeds, and to presint to you your kinswoman--our present pupil, and the solitary hope of our once renowned order.” The O’Mahony gathered nothing of her meaning from this lugubrious wail of words, and glanced over the speaker’s equally aged companions in vain for any sign of hopefulness, solitary or otherwise. Then he saw that the hindmost of the nuns had produced, as if from the huge folds of her black gown, a little girl of six or seven, clad in the same gloomy tint, whom she was pushing forward. The child advanced timidly under pressure, gazing wonderingly at The O’Mahony, out of big, heavily fringed hazel eyes. Her pale face was made almost chalk-like by contrast with a thick tangle of black hair, and wore an expression of apprehensive shyness almost painful to behold. The O’Mahony stretched out his hands and smiled, but the child hung back, and looked not in the least reassured. He asked her name with an effort at jovialty. [Illustration: 0089] “Kate O’Mahony, sir,” she said, in a low voice, bending her little knees in a formal bob of courtesy. “And are you goin’ to rig yourself out in those long gowns and vails, too, when you grow up, eh, siss?” he asked.