What, then, must the consequence of this irresistible but ill-fated passion be?
An elopement to the Continent would not only be difficult but dangerous, if not altogether impossible.
It was obviously evident that Mary Mahon had drawn her predictions from the same circumstances which led himself to similar conclusions; yet, notwithstanding all this, he felt that her words had thrown a foreshadowing of calamity and sorrow over his spirit, and he passed up to his own house in deep gloom and heaviness of heart.

It is true he remembered that this same Mary Mahon belonged to a family that had been inimical to his house.

She was a woman who had, in her early life, been degraded by crime, the remembrance of which had been by no means forgotten.

She was, besides, a paramour to the Red Rapparee, and he attributed much of her dark and ill-boding prophecy to a hostile and malignant spirit.
On the evening of the same day, probably about the same hour, the old squire having recruited himself by sleep, and felt refreshed and invigorated, sent for his daughter to sit with him as was her wont; for indeed, as the reader may now fully understand, his happiness altogether depended upon her society, and those tender attentions to him which constituted the chief solace of his life.
"Well, my girl," said he, when she entered the dining-room, for he seldom left it unless when they had company, "Well, darling, what do you think of this Mr.Mahon--pooh!--no--oh, Reilly--he who saved my life, and, probably, was the means of rescuing you from worse than death?
Isn't he a fine--a noble young fellow ?" "Indeed, I think so, papa; he appear's to be a perfect gentleman." "Hang perfect gentlemen, Helen! they are, some of them, the most contemptible whelps upon earth.

Hang me, but any fellow with a long-bodied coat, tight-kneed breeches, or stockings and pantaloons, with a watch in each fob, and a frizzled wig, is considered a perfect gentleman--a perfect puppy, Helen, an accomplished trifle.