The Press., 1895-01-17
(Concluded.) MACHA.
By ROSA MULHoLLAND.

Every day her yearning grew deeper, and the look of it settled in her eyes. Her husband resolutely appeared to mis- understand her, refused to meet her pleading glance, persuaded himself that she was ill, out of temper, anything rather than homesick and lonely by his side. If his conscience smote him with tho remembrance of an eager promise voluntarily made, he told himself that foolish VOWS ought never to be kept The strangest part of it all to him was that she did not reproach him with hay ing broken his word. But she did not think he had broken it-only that he was wearily long about beginning to fulfill it.
 A bitter season set in, and Sir Hum phrey, looking at his wife's thin cheek and the darkening trouble about her eyes, bethought him of taking her to some gay city, to genial climate and the novelty of strange faces and places. He had watched her walking to and fro among his comfortable tenantry, in and out of their warm, wholesome dwell ings, and he knew what brought the quiver of pain across her eyes. She was thinking of that dreary hovel among the Connaught hills. Where the sun always shines he thought she would forget how cold and hunger sting. So the Christ mas guests were put off, and Sir Hum phrey and Lady Gilbert went to winter at Florence.
 Uncomplainingly Macha did her hus- bands bidding. She said to herself, "When we come back, early in the spring, he will take me or let me gO.' ,
 In the mild air of Italy she did not realize so keenly the we'll remembered rigors of the Connaught winter. Her imagination was caught by the beauties that surrounded her, and for @ little time Sir Humphrey thought his triumph was at hand. It was but an accident that turned the scale against him and made shipwreck of his plans and of Macha's life. Accident or fate led Lady Gilbert, who rarely looked at anything printed, to glance into the columns of an English newspaper, and a paragraph met her eye in which certain rough statements were made regarding a fam inc of food and fuel in certain parts of
 
 Instantly her long suffering patience gave way, and all the latent fire of her nature burst forth. She flew to her hus- band, with burning eyes, and laid her finger on the cruel lines. Sir Hum phrey was ill an irritable humor. Cut off from his customary country pursuits, idling in a foreign city, he had fallen into play and had lost heavily the night before this eventful morning. The sight of his wife S feverish emotion made him angry. Her passionate demand to be sent with succOr to her people chafed and bewildered him. Macha! for whose good he had inconvenienced himself sc seriously, left his home ill winter, low cred himself to sit at the table with gamblers! Macha to rise and turn on him with those flaming eyes! He met her with flat denial and uttered some bitter reproaches, upbraiding her with her imprudence and persistent folly. Having begun to give little vent to his displeasure, he ended by saying more than he had ever meant to say. He refused to believe in the newspapers tale of distress and forbade her to men, ton her people aSaln.
 Macha stood like one stunned, slowly taking in what his angry words con- veyed. As she had believed his words before, so she believed them now. They fell upon her like blows, and when he had turned harshly away and left her under sentence of his displeasure one only desire and determination possessed her-to get away out of this cruel world of plenty and bring food and comfort to her famishing mother. She did not weigh the consequence of defying her husband. Her agony and longing blot ted out even tEe memory of his exist ence.
 How she made her way to Connaught who shall tell? As the lioness finds her stolen young so did Macha scent the path to her native hills. Accustomed to rely upon her husband for everything, to follow his instructions and mark out nothing for herself, she must have made almost supernatural exertions to accom- plish her end. But accomplish it sho did. When her husband returned that night, half angry and half relenting, revolving plans for reconciliation, taking cov1sCl with himself as to how he ought to deal with her, knowing very well that he meant to send @ largess to those crea- lures on the mountain who were sucIi a thorn in his side-when he came back to his home, Macha was gone.
 Dismay, anger, terror, all passed through and over him. He first swore and condemned her, then remembered her sweet face and her former patience and almost forgave her. UneasiIy he re- solved to let her go and have her way.