CHAPTER III.—(Continued)

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1967, 14 February 1885, Page 5 (Supplement)

CHAPTER lll.— (Continued )

But there was that in the woman's face, and especially in her dark, deep set eyes, that was a warning to a closer observer. It was a hard face, a cruel face, an obstinate face, »n utterly untrustworthy face. If ever ignorance and prejudice, and a total want of moral consciousness were stamped upon features they were stamped in the countenance of Mrs. Brady. Each of the three that seated themselves at the table lAronnd her on the occasion of which I write had come resemblance to the mother; but the unscrupulous cunning of Cornelius, the animal vanity of Nora, and the ungovernable tfkßsions that gleamed in the eyes of Father James were all doubled and intensified in the old woman's face. As the man we call Father James seated himself Opposite to where she stood she leaned on both hands as she rested them on the table and bent over it toward his bowed face, as she muttered angrily betweon her set teeth : 11 So it's on you again ? Oh, blood of the clever Bradys, of Clogher, turned to water, the night is comin' on an' it's freezin' ye are 1 " The bitter scorn of the tones was felt keenly by the man to whom they were addressed, and a glance was flashed from his awful eyes into the woman's that was terrible to meet. " By " he cried, if you weren't my mother you would haunt me too, for I'd kill you 1 And a3 it is you'd better be warned, for you may go too far some day, and my life is of little worth. She started back as his clenched fiat was ■truck so violently on the table that the dishes were disturbed, but at a warning movement from Cornelius her mood seemed to instantly change, and she laughed harshly. " One can't say a word to you at all, James, these times," she said ; can't you take a joke from your mother ? " " Joke! " he repeated, as he Btood up and dashed his chair back from the table. "Am I a child again that you think to twist me •round your finger 1 Joke 1 who in their Mnies would joke with blood on their hands And the hangman's rope round their necks ? " and he slammed the door of an adjoining - JO f >"i behind him, leaving his supper untouched on the table. Mrs. Brady's face grew white as chalk, and ah* fell into a chair, staring at Cornelius with her terrified dark eyes. " What has come over him at all, Conn," ■he cried ; " he's not the same man Bince we come here. Oh, my God, do you think he'll go back on us after all ? " and she rocked herself to and fro despairingly. " To tell you the truth, mother, I'm getting afraid," replied Cornelius, as he attacked his food with an appetite "I hope that the black coat isn't putting ideas of religion and repentance in his head." " If I thought so I'd tear it off his back 1 A eon of mine turn white livered ? A man with my blood in him turn back from the revenge, 1 swere him to on the cross ? If I thought so, I'm his mother, and I'd knife him k with my own hands." X She looked as if she would. She seemed Y quite capable of any deed as she rose and shook her right hand out clenched against the air around her. As her long fingers gripped each other, then so they would doubtless have gripped an enemy's throat had it been within reach when the hot blood was boiling in her veinH — the sarde blood, as she bad truly said, that had made Father James k a haunted man. I And Nora ate her food hastily, and scarcely ■ hearing a word that was passing round her ; y/l for she was used to her mother's temper, ™ though she was not in her secrets, and never troubled her head an to what aroused it. At the present she was too much occupied about the admirer her brother had given her in his idle chaff, and calculating the effect of a dress she intended to don on the morrow with the ■ole hope of exhibiting herself in it to the unconscious Irishman. As for Mrs. Brady, uhe had forgotten the presence of her youngest until it was recalled to her by a motion of Cornelius as he spoke in a low voice. "You forget, mother, that. somebody is here." ••Oh Nora? She never hears anything that does'nt concern her own self, or sees anything, God help her, but her own handsome face in the glass. Nora 1 Nora, I say 1 " " What ? " returned Nora, with a start on her return from the realms of fancy. " What wor you thinking of ? " Tady Connor," promptly replied the girl ; and Cornelius rose from the table with a loud laugh that made the angry blood rush into his sister's face.