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I had been waiting but for a very few minutes when another female servant, somewhat older than the first, entered the room. She made some apology on the part of the person whom I had come to visit, for the slight delay which had already occurred, and requested me further to wait for a few minutes longer, intimating that the lady’s grief was so violent, that without great effort she could not bring herself to speak calmly at all. As if to beguile the time, the good dame went on in a highly communicative strain to tell me, amongst much that could not interest me, a little of what I had desired to hear. I discovered that the grief of her whom I had come to visit was excited by the sudden death of a little boy, her only child, who was then lying dead in his mother’s chamber.

‘And the mother’s name?’ said I, inquiringly.

The woman looked at me for a moment, smiled, and shook her head with the air of mingled mystery and importance which seems to say, ‘I am unfathomable.’ I did not care to press the question, though I suspected that much of her apparent reluctance was affected, knowing that my doubts respecting the identity of the person whom I had come to visit must soon be set at rest, and after a little pause the worthy Abigail went on as fluently as ever. She told me that her young mistress had been, for the time she had been with her–that was, for about a year and a half–in declining health and spirits, and that she had loved her little child to a degree beyond expression–so devotedly that she could not, in all probability, survive it long.

While she was running on in this way the bell rang, and signing me to follow, she opened the room door, but stopped in the hall, and taking me a little aside, and speaking in a whisper, she told me, as I valued the life of the poor lady, not to say one word of the death of young O’Mara. I nodded acquiescence, and ascending a narrow and ill-constructed staircase, she stopped at a chamber door and knocked.

‘Come in,’ said a gentle voice from within, and, preceded by my conductress, I entered a moderately-sized, but rather gloomy chamber.

There was but one living form within it –it was the light and graceful figure of a young woman. She had risen as I entered the room; but owing to the obscurity of the apartment, and to the circumstance that her face, as she looked towards the door, was turned away from the light, which found its way in dimly through the narrow windows, I could not instantly recognise the features.

‘You do not remember me, sir?’ said the same low, mournful voice. ‘I am–I WAS –Ellen Heathcote.’

‘I do remember you, my poor child,’ said I, taking her hand; ‘I do remember you very well. Speak to me frankly–speak to me as a friend. Whatever I can do or say for you, is yours already; only speak.’

‘You were always very kind, sir, to those–to those that WANTED kindness.’

The tears were almost overflowing, but she checked them; and as if an accession of fortitude had followed the momentary weakness, she continued, in a subdued but firm tone, to tell me briefly the circumstances of her marriage with O’Mara. When she had concluded the recital, she paused for a moment; and I asked again:

‘Can I aid you in any way–by advice or otherwise?’

‘I wish, sir, to tell you all I have been thinking about,’ she continued. ‘I am sure, sir, that Master Richard loved me once–I am sure he did not think to deceive me; but there were bad, hard-hearted people about him, and his family were all rich and high, and I am sure he wishes NOW that he had never, never seen me. Well, sir, it is not in my heart to blame him. What was I that I should look at him?–an ignorant, poor, country girl–and he so high and great, and so beautiful. The blame was all mine–it was all my fault; I could not think or hope he would care for me more than a little time. Well, sir, I thought over and over again that since his love was gone from me for ever, I should not stand in his way, and hinder whatever great thing his family wished for him. So I thought often and often to write him a letter to get the marriage broken, and to send me home; but for one reason, I would have done it long ago: there was a little child, his and mine–the dearest, the loveliest.’ She could not go on for a minute or two. ‘The little child that is lying there, on that bed; but it is dead and gone, and there is no reason NOW why I should delay any more about it.’