"Shure, I mane what I say! Ye're a pris'ner fer life, Miss Dainty Chase, sintenced by yer aunt and cousins to solitary confinement on bread and water till you die—and the sooner you do that last the better they will be pleased!" returned the coarse woman letting down her basket and taking out a glass tumbler, two large bottles of water, some loaves of stale bread, and some of Dainty's clothes, saying, facetiously: "Here's yer duds and yer grub—enough o' both ter last yer a week—and at the end of a week I'll call again with more provisions, miss—and likewise, if you get tired of living in such luxury, here's a bottle of laudanum to pass yer into purgatory," coolly putting it on the only chair the room contained, while Dainty's blue eyes dilated in horror at her fiendish brutality.
"Sheila, Sheila, surely this is some cruel jest! You can not mean to leave me here alone as you say! Oh, what harm have I ever done to you that you treat me so cruelly?" she cried in anguish.
"As for the harrum, none; but I always hated ye from the first time I looked on yer bonny face. As for the raison, 'tis soon towld. I fell in love with the young masther soon's ever he kem home from Yurrup, and I did me best ter make up ter him; but he would none of me. And I seen straight away his heart was wid you, and I hated yer ever since, and forby yer two cousins and t' ould Leddy Ellsworth turned against yer for the same raison, because yer won the masther's heart. So whin they offered ter make me fortune for scaring yer ter death, I was ready and glad ter take the job ter pay off me own score agin ye! So there now, ye see it's small good luck yer pritty face got ye!" concluded the cruel Irish woman, exultantly.
Poor Dainty, gazing into that hard face, felt the utter uselessness of all appeals for mercy. The woman had the heart of a fiend, and was openly glad of her victim's misery.
She determined to appeal to her cupidity, and ventured, timidly:
"If you will only give me my liberty, Sheila, I give you my word of honor Mr. Ellsworth will make you rich."
"Rich, is it? and him a-dying!" grunted Sheila Kelly, indifferently.
"Dying! Oh, what mean you, Sheila? Speak! What has happened to my darling?" shrieked poor Dainty, in wild alarm.
Sheila Kelly shrugged her shoulders, and proceeded to fill the dying lamp with fresh oil from a tin can she had brought in her capacious basket. Then sitting down on the foot of the narrow cot, she began and recounted the events of the morning to her anxious listener, ending with:
"Shure, the mane, murtherin' Ashley is safe in jail, t' ould Leddy Ellsworth, going from one fainting fit ter another, and Masther Lovelace a-laying with ter bullet in his head, niver spakin' a worrud since he was shot, niver opening his eyes, jist a-dying by inches, sez all the docthers."