rnment is called treason by our
laws, and is punishable by death, just like desertion." \

"Therefore is desertion the better course, as it involves none but one,"
said Cashel, laughing, as he turned away.

CHAPTER IV. THE KENNYFECK HOUSEHOLD

Man, being reasonable, must dine out;
The best of life is but a dinner-party.

Amphytrion, Canto IV.

It was about half-past six of an autumn evening, just as the gray
twilight was darkening into the gloom that precedes night, that a
servant, dressed in the most decorous black, drew down the window-blinds
of a large and splendidly furnished drawing-room of a house in Merrion
Square, Dublin.

Having arranged certain portly deep-cushioned chairs into the orderly
disorder that invites social groupings, and having disposed various
other articles of furniture according to those notions of domestic
landscape so popular at the present day, he stirred the fire and
withdrew,--all these motions being performed with the noiseless decorum
of a church.

A glance at the apartment, even by the fitful light of the coal-fire,
showed that it was richly, even magnificently, furnished. The
looking-glasses were immense in size, and framed with all that the most
lavish art of the carver could display. The hangings were costly Lyons
silk, the sofas, tables, and cabinets were all exquisite specimens of
modern skill and elegance, while the carpet almost rose above the foot
in the delicate softness of its velvet pile. A harp, a grand pianoforte,
and several richly-bound and gilded volumes strewed about gave evidence
of tastes above the mere voluptuous enjoyment of ease, and in one window
stood an embroidery-frame, with its unfinished labor, from which the
threads depended in that fashion, that showed it had lately occupied the
fair hands of the artist.

This very enviable apartment belonged to Mr. Mountjoy Kennyfeck, the
leading solicitor of Dublin, a man who, for something more than thirty
years, had stood at the head of his walk in the capital, and was reputed
to be one of its most respected and richest citizens. Mrs. Mountjoy
Kennyfeck--neither for our own nor our reader's convenience dare we omit
the "prenom"--was of a western family considerably above that of her
liege lord and master in matter of genealogy, but whose quarterings had
so far survived the family acres that she was fain to accept the hand
of a wealthy attorney, after having for some years been the belle o