And in our talk he confessed to me that he was an Irish gentleman in the service of one Turlogh Luinech O'Neill, a notable chieftain in the Isle of the Saints; and that he travelled to London on an errand to no less a man than her Majesty's Secretary of State to report to him the death and burial of one Lady Cantire, an aged servant of her Majesty, and sometime wife to the said Turlogh." This was news indeed; and the maiden's face flushed with many mingled emotions as she heard it.
"Can it be true ?" said she.

"Sir Poet, tell me briefly what else this gentleman had to tell of my father ?" "Nay, mistress mine, I can remember little else; for I was thinking not of his master, but his poetic tooth; not of his defunct mistress, but of my living muse.

Yet, stay, he told me the old man was desolate, his sons being all established elsewhere, and his one daughter lost.

By which I take it, he spoke of thy celestial self.

And strange indeed if the loss of such a one were not as blindness itself to one who hath looked in they resplendent face." "Humphrey," said the maiden, turning from the poet to me, and taking Jeannette's little hand in hers, "this news means much to me.