the "company honest," and knew her
cards trumps, she was tolerably easy for the result. She liked
Kingstown--she liked short whist--she liked the military--she liked "the
junior bar," of which she knew a good number--she had a well furnished
house in Kildare-street--and a well cushioned pew in St. Anne's--she was
a favourite at the castle--and Dr. Labatt "knew her constitution." Why,
with all these advantages, she should ever have thought of leaving the
"happy valley" of her native city, it was somewhat hard to guess. Was it
that thoughts of matrimony, which the continent held out more prospect
for, had invaded the fair widow's heart? was it that the altered
condition to which politics had greatly reduced Dublin, had effected this
change of opinion? or was it like that indescribable longing for the
unknown something, which we read of in the pathetic history of the fair
lady celebrated, I believe, by Petrarch, but I quote from memory:

"Mrs. Gill is very ill,
Nothing can improve her,
But to see the Tuillerie,
And waddle through the Louvre."

None of these, I believe, however good and valid reasons in themselves,
were the moving powers upon the present occasion; the all-sufficient one
being that Mrs. Bingham had a daughter. Now Miss Bingham was Dublin too
--but Dublin of a later edition--and a finer, more hot-pressed copy than
her mamma. She had been educated at Mrs. Somebody's seminary in
Mountjoy-square--had been taught to dance by Montague--and had learned
French from a Swiss governess--with a number of similar advantages
--a very pretty figure--dark eyes--long eye-lashes and a dimple--and last,
but of course least, the deserved reputation of a large fortune. She had
made a most successful debut in the Dublin world, where she was much
admired and flattered, and which soon suggested to her quick mind, as it
has often done in similar cases to a young provincial debutante, not to
waste her "fraicheur" upon the minor theatres, but at once to appear upon
the "great boards;" so far evidencing a higher flight of imagination
and enterprise than is usually found among the clique of her early
associates, who may be characterized as that school of young ladies,
who like the "Corsair" and Dunleary, and say, "ah don't!"

She possessed much more common sense than her mamma, and promised under
proper advantages to become speedily quite suffic