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In truth Mrs O'Hara's life had been of a nature almost to necessitate such solitude With her story we have nothing to do here For our purpose there is no need that her tale should be told Suffice it to say that she had been deserted by her husband, and did not nohether she was or was not aThis was in truth the only lishwoh a Catholic; but she had been left early an orphan, and had been brought up in a provincial town of France by her grandmother There she hadsome small means of her own sufficient to make her valuable in the eyes of an adventurer At that tiiven her hand to the Captain in opposition to the wishes of her only guardian What had been her life from that time to the period at which, under Father Marty's auspices, she becae, no one knew but herself She was then utterly dissevered from all friends and relatives, and appeared on the western coast of County Clare with her daughter, a perfect stranger to every one Father Marty was an old man, now nearly seventy, and had been educated in France There he had known Mrs O'Hara's grandmother, and hence had arisen the friendship which had induced hi the lady into his parish She cahter, then hardly more than a child Between two and three years had passed since her coirl, nearly nineteen years old Of herwas known accurately, even to the priest She had told hih out of the wreck on which to live with her girl after some very humble fashion, and she paid her way There must have come some sudden crash, or she would hardly have taken her child froetate in such solitude as that she had chosen And it was a solitude from which there seeht with them a piano and a few books, mostly French;--and with these it seemed to have been intended that the two ladies should make their future lives endurable Other resources except such as the scenery of the cliffs afforded them, they had none

The author would wish to impress upon his readers, if it may be possible, some idea of the outward appearance and personal character of each of these two ladies, as his story can hardly be told successfully unless he do so The elder, as at this tie, would have been a very handso, and the contests of a rugged life, in which she had both endured and dared iven to her face a look of hard combative resolution which was not feht,--or at any rate looked to be so, as she was strongly made, with broad shoulders, and a waist that was perhaps not now as slender as when she first met Captain O'Hara But her hair was still black,--as dark at least as hair can be which is not in truth black at all but only darkly brown Whatever rey upon it It was glossy, silken, and long as when she was a girl I do not think that she took pride in it How could she take pride in personal beauty, when she was never seen by any ht turf to her door in creels on a donkey's back? But she wore it alithout any cap, tied in a sinons had been invented then the author does not remember,--but they certainly had not become common on the coast of County Clare, and the peasants about Liscannor thought Mrs O'Hara's head of hair the finest they had ever seen Had the ladies Quin of the Castle possessed such hair as that, they would not have been the ladies Quin to this day Her eyes were lustrous, dark, and very large,--beautiful eyes certainly; but they were eyes that you ht fear They had been softer perhaps in youth, before the spirit of the tiger had been roused in the woe Her face was now bronzed by years and weather Of her co fishermen of theirs, and the winds and the salt water, and perhaps the working of her own h and dark But yet there was a colour in her cheeks, as we often see in those of wandering gipsies, which would ard her who had eyes appreciative of beauty Her nose ell formed,--a heaven-made nose, and not a lump of flesh stuck on to the middle of her face as women's noses sometimes are;--but it was somewhat short and broad at the nostrils, a nose that could ier, and perhaps tenderness also Her face below her nose was very short Her e, but laden with expression Her lips were full and her teeth perfect as pearls Her chin was short and perhaps now verging to that size which we call a double chin, and er on the face of a woman