the duller half of a table of
eighteen. She turned slightly to Captain O'Donnell. He had committed
himself to speech at last, without tilting his shoulders to exclude the
company by devoting himself to his partner, and as he faced the table
Miss Mattock's inclination to listen attracted him. He cast his eyes on
her: a quiet look, neither languid nor frigid seeming to her both open
and uninviting. She had the oddest little shiver, due to she knew not
what. A scrutiny she could have borne, and she might have read a
signification; but the look of those mild clear eyes which appeared to
say nothing save that there was fire behind them, hit on some perplexity,
or created it; for she was aware of his unhappy passion for the beautiful
Miss Adister; the whole story had been poured into her ears; she had been
moved by it. Possibly she had expected the eyes of such a lover to betray
melancholy, and his power of containing the expression where the
sentiment is imagined to be most transparent may have surprised her,
thrilling her as melancholy orbs would not have done.

Captain Con could have thumped his platter with vexation. His wife's
diplomacy in giving the heiress to Colonel Adister for the evening had
received his cordial support while he manoeuvred cleverly to place Philip
on the other side of her; and now not a step did the senseless fellow
take, though she offered him his chance, dead sick of her man on the
right; not a word did he have in ordinary civility; he was a burning
disgrace to the chivalry of Erin. She would certainly be snapped up by a
man merely yawning to take the bite. And there's another opportunity gone
for the old country!--one's family to boot!

Those two were in the middle of the table, and it is beyond mortal,
beyond Irish, capacity, from one end of a table of eighteen to whip up
the whole body of them into a lively unanimous froth, like a dish of
cream fetched out of thickness to the airiest lightness. Politics, in the
form of a firebrand or apple of Discord, might knead them together and
cut them in batches, only he had pledged his word to his wife to shun
politics as the plague, considering Mr. Mattock's presence. And yet it
was tempting: the recent Irish news had stung him; he could say sharp
things from the heart, give neat thrusts; and they were fairly divided
and well matched. There was himself, a giant; and there was an
unrecognised bard of his country, no other than himself too; and there
was