advantages like these, she will soon forget the humdrum life of
Kilmorran Castle, and become reconciled to a splendour and magnificence
unsurpassed by even the viceregal court."

Here, then, let me conclude this account of the Rooneys, while I resume
the thread of my own narrative. Although I feel for and am ashamed of
the prolixity in which I have indulged, yet, as I speak of real people,
well known at the period of which I write, and as they may to a certain
extent convey an impression of the tone of one class in the society
of that day, I could not bring myself to omit their mention, nor even
dismiss them more briefly.

CHAPTER VIII. THE VISIT

I have already recorded the first twenty-four hours of my life in
Ireland; and, if there was enough in them to satisfy me that the country
was unlike in many respects that which I had left, there was also some
show of reason to convince me that, if I did not conform to the habits
and tastes of those around me, I should incur a far greater chance of
being laughed at by them than be myself amused by their eccentricities.
The most remarkable feature that struck me was the easy, even cordial
manner with which acquaintance was made. Every one met you as if he had
in some measure been prepared for the introduction; a tone of intimacy
sprang up at once; your tastes were hinted, your wishes guessed at,
with an unaffected kindness that made you forget the suddenness of the
intimacy: so that, when at last you parted with your dear friend of
some half an hour's acquaintance, you could not help wondering at the
confidences you had made, the avowals you had spoken, and the lengths to
which you had gone in close alliance with one you had never seen before,
and might possibly never meet again. Strange enough as this was with
men, it was still more singular when it extended to the gentler sex.
Accustomed as I had been all my life to the rigid observances of
etiquette in female society, nothing surprised me so much as the rapid
steps by which Irish ladies passed from acquaintance to intimacy, from
intimacy to friendship. The unsuspecting kindliness of woman's nature
has certainly no more genial soil than in the heart of Erin's daughters.
There is besides, too, a winning softness in their manner towards the
stranger of another land that imparts to their hospitable reception a
tone of courteous warmth I have never seen in any other country.

The freedom of manner I have here alluded to