f her
county, and the admired beauty of Castle balls and drawing-rooms.

It had been at first, indeed, a very hard struggle for the O'Haras to
adopt the style and title of Kennyfeck, and poor Matilda was pitied in
all the moods and tenses for exchanging the riotous feudalism of Mayo
for the decorous quietude and wealthy _insouciance_ of a Dublin mansion;
and the various scions of the house did not scruple to express very
unqualified opinions on the subject of her fall; but Time--that heals
so much--Time and Mr. Kennyfeck's claret, of which they all drank
most liberally during the visits to town, assuaged the rancor of these
prejudices, and "Matty," it was hinted, might have done worse; while
some hardy spirit averred that "Kennyfeck, though not one of ourselves,
has a great deal of the gentleman about him, notwithstanding."

A word of Mr. Kennyfeck himself, and even a word will almost suffice. He
was a very tall, pompous-looking personage, with a retiring forehead
and a large prominent nose; he wore a profusion of powder, and always
dressed in the most scrupulous black; he spoke little, and that slowly;
he laughed never. It was not that he was melancholy or depressed; it
seemed rather that his nature had been fashioned in conformity with the
onerous responsibilities of his pursuit, and that he would have deemed
any exhibition of mirthful emotion unseemly and unbecoming one who, so
to say, was a kind of high priest in the temple of equity. Next to the
Chancellor's he venerated the decisions of Mrs. Kennyfeck; after Mrs.
Kennyfeck came the Master of the Rolls. This was his brief and simple
faith, and it is astonishing in what simple rules of guidance men amass
vast fortunes, and obtain the highest suffrages of civic honor and
respect!

Mr. Kennyfeck's family consisted of two daughters: the eldest had been a
beauty for some years, and, even at the period our tale opens, had lost
few of her attractions. She was tall, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, with
an air of what in the Irish capital is called "decided fashion" about
her, but in less competent circles might have been called almost
effrontery. She looked strangers very steadily in the face, spoke with a
voice full, firm, and unabashed,--no matter what the subject, or who the
audience,--and gave her opinions on people and events with a careless
indifference to consequences that many mistook for high genius
rebellious against control.

Olivia, three years younger than her