ough I am grateful to the minister for all he has taught me, I
should be thankful to receive further lessons from you."

The Earl was somewhat amused at the thoughts of his little daughter
giving instruction to the young fisher-boy. At the same time,
good-natured and thoughtless, he made not the slightest objection.
Indeed he never thwarted Nora in anything she had taken it into her head
to wish for, and certainly he was not likely to do so in a matter so
trifling as this.

Dermot appeared, as he had been invited, to receive his lessons, but was
somewhat surprised to find that Lady Nora was scarcely as advanced in
some branches of knowledge as himself.

"Indeed you have made great progress," said Lady Sophy, who had
undertaken to be the chief instructress. "If you persevere you will
soon become as well educated as most young gentlemen of the day. I am
acquainted with several, indeed, who don't know as much as you do."

These remarks encouraged Dermot to persevere, even with more
determination than before. Every moment he could spare from his duties,
he was now engaged in reading.

His poor mother looked on with astonishment that her boy should thus
become so learned, and more than once it entered into her mind that it
was a pity she had not allowed him to follow Father O'Rourke's
suggestion, and become a priest. "He would have been a bishop to a
certainty," she exclaimed to herself--"and only think to be a holy
bishop, certain of heaven. What a great man he would have been made, a
cardinal, and that he would have been, if His Holiness the Pope had ever
become acquainted with him. I wonder now if it's too late, but I'm
afraid after what he said to Father O'Rourke that his Reverence will
never give him a helping hand."

Such and similar thoughts frequently passed through the mind of the poor
widow. More than once she ventured to broach the subject to her son,
but he shook his head with a look of disgust.

"If I am ever to be otherwise than what I am, I hope never to become
like Father O'Rourke. No, no, mother I have other thoughts, and do not,
I pray you, ever ask me again to become a priest."

The next visit Dermot paid to the castle, he was detained longer than
usual by another lady insisting on taking his portrait. His feelings
rather rebelled against this. He had been flattered when Lady Sophy had
first taken it, but he did not much like the idea of being made a figure
for the exercise of other fai