In this case heart spoke to heart, and by the time they sat down to dinner, each felt conscious that their passion, brief as was the period of their acquaintance, had become, whether for good or evil, the uncontrollable destiny of their lives.
William Reilly was the descendant of an old and noble Irish family.

His ancestors had gone through all the vicissitudes and trials, and been engaged in most of the civil broils and wars, which, in Ireland, had characterized the reign of Elizabeth.

As we are not disposed to enter into a disquisition upon the history of that stormy period, unless to say that we believe in our souls both parties were equally savage and inhuman, and that there was not, literally, a toss up between them, we have only to add that Reilly's family, at least that branch of it to which he belonged, had been reduced by the ruin that resulted from the civil wars, and the confiscations peculiar to the times.

His father had made a good deal of money abroad in business, but feeling that melancholy longing for his native soil, for the dark mountains and the green fields of his beloved country, he returned to it, and having taken a large farm of about a thousand acres, under a peculiar tenure, which we shall mention ere we close, he devoted himself to pasturage and agriculture.

Old Reilly had been for some years dead, and his eldest son, William, was now not only the head of his immediate family, but of that great branch of it to which he belonged, although he neither claimed nor exercised the honor.