On Christmas-day Rachel O'Mahony wrote a letter to her lover at Morony Castle:
 

    Cecil Street, Christmas-day, 1880.

    Dearest Frank,

    You do love me, don't you? What's the use of my loving you, and thinking that you are everything, only that you are to love me? I am quite content that it should be so. Only let it be so. You'll ask me what reason I have to be jealous. I am not jealous. I do think in my heart that you think that I'm—just perfect. And when I tell myself that it is so, I lay myself back in my chair and kiss at you with my lips till I am tired of kissing the space where you ain't. But if I am wrong, and if you are having a good time of it with Miss Considine at Mrs. McKeon's ball, and are not thinking a bit of me and my kisses, what's the use? It's a very unfair bargain that a woman makes with a man. "Yes; I do love you," I say,—"but—" Then there's a sigh. "Yes; I'll love you," you say—"if—" Then there's a laugh. If I tell a fib, and am not worth having, you can always recuperate¹. But we can't recuperate. I'm to go about the world and be laughed at, as the girl that Frank Jones made a fool of. Oh! Mr. Jones, if you treat me in that way, won't I punish you? I'll jump into the lough with a label round my neck telling the whole story. But I am not a bit jealous, because I know you are good.

    And now I must tell you a bit more of my history. We got rid of that lovely hotel, paying ￡6 10s., when that just earned ￡1. And I have brought the piano with me. The man at Erard's told me that I should have it for ￡2 10s. a month, frankly² owning that he hoped to get my custom. "But Mr. Moss³ is to pay nothing?" I asked. He swore that Mr. Moss would have to pay nothing, and leave what occurred between him and me. I don't think he will. ￡30 a year ought to be enough for the hire of a piano. So here we are established, at ￡10 a month—the first-floor, with father's bedroom behind the sitting-room⁴. I have the room upstairs over the sitting-room. They are small stumpy little rooms,—"but mine own." Who says—"But mine own?" Somebody does, and I repeat it. They are mine own, at any rate till next Saturday.

    And we have settled this terrible engagement and signed it. I'm to sing for Moss at "The Embankment" for four months, at the rate of ￡600 a year. It was a Jew's bargain, for I really had filled the house for a fortnight. Fancy a theatre called "The Embankment"! There is a nasty muddy rheumatic sound about it; but it's very

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