lf into popularity with a claptrap novel."

"I could not write a claptrap novel, or claptrap verses," sighed Lady
Mabel. "If I cannot soar above the clouds, I will never spread my poor
little wings again."

"Then you must be content to accept your failure as an evidence of the
tendencies of an essentially Philistine age--an age in which people
admire Brown, and Jones, and Robinson."

Here Lord Mallow gave a string of names, sacrificing the most famous
reputations of the age to Mabel Ashbourne's vanity.

This brief conversation in the orchid-house was the first healing balm
that had been applied to the bleeding heart of the poetess. She was
deeply grateful to Lord Mallow. This was indeed sympathy. How different
from Roderick's clumsy advice and obtrusive affectation of candour.
Mabel determined that she would do her best to make Lord Mallow's visit
pleasant. She gave him a good deal of her society, in fact all she
could spare from Roderick, who was not an exacting lover. They were so
soon to be married that really there was no occasion for them to be
greedy of _tete-a-tete_ companionship. They would have enough of each
other's company among the Norwegian fjords.

Lord Mallow did not care about riding under an almost tropical sun, nor
did he care to expose his horse to the exasperating attacks of
forest-flies; so he went about with the Duchess and her daughter in
Lady Mabel's pony carriage--he saw schools and cottages--and told the
two ladies all the grand things he meant to do on his Irish estate when
he had leisure to do them.

"You must wait till you are married," said the Duchess good-naturedly.
"Ladies understand these details so much better than gentlemen. Mabel
more than half planned those cottages you admired just now. She took
the drawings out of the architect's hands, and altered them according
to her own taste."

"And as a natural result, the cottages are perfection!" exclaimed Lord
Mallow.

That visit to Ashbourne was one of the most memorable periods in Lord
Mallow's life. He was an impressible young man, and he had been
unconsciously falling deeper in love with Lady Mabel every day during
the last three months. Her delicate beauty, her culture, her elegance,
her rank, all charmed and fascinated him; but her sympathy with Erin
was irresistible. It was not the first time that he had been in love,
by a great many times. The list of the idols he had worshipped
stretched backwards to the dim remoteness