forbidden her going
to him; and that he had assured Lord Colambre he would not see her
if she went to him. After such rapid and varied emotions, poor Grace
desired repose, and her friend took care that it should be secured to
her for the remainder of the day.

In the meantime, Lord Clonbrony had kindly and judiciously employed his
lady in a discussion about certain velvet furniture, which Grace had
painted for the drawing-room at Clonbrony Castle.

In Lady Clonbrony's mind, as in some bad paintings, there was no
KEEPING; all objects, great and small, were upon the same level.

The moment her son entered the room, her ladyship exclaimed--

'Everything pleasant at once! Here's your father tells me, Grace's
velvet furniture's all packed; really, Soho's the best man in the world
of his kind, and the cleverest--and so, after all, my dear Colambre, as
I always hoped and prophesied, at last you will marry an heiress.'

'And Terry,' said Lord Clonbrony, 'will win his wager from Mordicai.'

'Terry!' repeated Lady Clonbrony, 'that odious Terry!--I hope, my lord,
that he is not to be one of my comforts in Ireland.'

'No, my dear mother; he is much better provided for than we could have
expected. One of my father's first objects was to prevent him from being
any encumbrance to you. We consulted him as to the means of making
him happy; and the knight acknowledged that he had long been casting
a sheep's eye at a little snug place, that will soon be open, in his
native country--the chair of assistant barrister at the sessions.
"Assistant barrister!" said my father; "but, my dear Terry, you have all
your life been evading the laws, and very frequently breaking the peace;
do you think this has qualified you peculiarly for being a guardian of
the laws?" Sir Terence replied, "Yes, sure; set a thief to catch a thief
is no bad maxim. And did not Mr. Colquhoun, the Scotchman, get himself
made a great justice, by his making all the world as wise as himself,
about thieves of all sorts, by land and by water, and in the air too,
where he detected the mud-larks?--And is not Barrington chief-justice of
Botany Bay?"

'My father now began to be seriously alarmed, lest Sir Terence should
insist upon his using his interest to make him an assistant barrister.
He was not aware that five years' practice at the bar was a necessary
accomplishment for this office; when, fortunately for all parties,
my good friend, Count O'Halloran, helped us out of