e. "To my fancy, that would be a very paradise."

"Oh, mamma! isn't that so like dear old Kilgoran!" said a tall, thin
young lady, handing an abbey, as large as Westminster, to another in
widow's black.

"Oh, Maria! I wonder at your showing me what must bring up such
sad memories!" said the mamma, affectedly, while she pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes.

"If she means her father's house," said Lady Janet to Linton, "it's
about as like a like as--Lord Kilgoff to the Farnese Hercules, or his
wife to any other lady in the peerage."

"You remember Kilgoran, my Lord," said the lady in black to the Chief
Justice; "does that remind you of it?"

"Very like,--very like, indeed, madam," said the old judge, looking at a
rock-work grotto in a fish-pond.

"What's this?" cried another, taking up a great Saxon fortress,
with bastions and gate-towers and curtains, as gloomy and sombre as
Indian-ink could make it.

"As a residence I think that is far too solemn-looking and sad."

"What did you say it was, sir?" asked the judge.

"The elevation for the new jail at Naas, my Lord," replied Linton,
gravely.

"I 'm very glad to hear it. We have been sadly crippled for room there
latterly."

"Do you approve of the Panopticon plan, my Lord?" said Mrs. White, who
never omitted a question when a hard word could be introduced.

"It is, madam,--you are perfectly correct," said the obsequious old
judge,--"very much the same kind of thing as the Pantechnicon."

"Talking of Panopticon, where 's Kilgoff?" whispered Linton to one of
the hussars.

"Don't you see him yonder, behind the harp? How that poor woman must be
bored by such _espionnage!_"

"If you mean to build a house, sir," said Lady Janet, addressing Cashel,
with a tone of authority, "don't, I entreat of you, adopt any of these
absurd outrages upon taste and convenience, but have a good square stone
edifice."

"Four, or even five stories high," broke in Linton, gravely.

"Four quite enough," resumed she, "with a roomy hall, and all the
reception-rooms leading off it. Let your bedrooms--" "Be numerous
enough, at all events," said Linton again.

"Of course; and so arranged that you can devote one story to families
exclusively."

"Yes; the _garcons_ should have their dens as remote as possible from
the quieter regions."

"Have a mass of small sitting-rooms beside the larger salons. In a
country-house there's nothing like letting people form their own little
coterie