an O'Flaherty or an
O'Neil, or something of that sort; and there's Laura--you don't know my
daughter?' 'I have not the honour.'

'Come along, and I'll introduce you to her; a little reserved or so,'
said he, in a whisper, as if to give me the _carte du pays_--' rather
cold, you know, to strangers; but when she hears you are the nephew of
my old friend Mark--Mark and I were like brothers.--Laura, my love,'
said he, tapping the young lady on her white shoulder as she stood with
her back towards us; 'Laura, dear---the son of my oldest friend in the
world, General O'Leary.'

The young lady turned quickly round, and, as she drew herself up
somewhat haughtily, dropped me a low curtsy, and then resumed her
conversation with a very much whiskered gentleman near. The colonel
seemed, despite all his endeavours to overcome it, rather put out by
his daughter's hauteur to the _son_ of his old friend; and what he would
have said or done I know not, but the abbe came suddenly up, and with a
card invited me to join a party at whist. The moment was so awkward for
all, that I would have accepted an invitation even to ecarte to escape
from the difficulty, and I followed him into a small boudoir where two
ladies were awaiting us. I had just time to see that they were
both pleasing-looking, and of that time of life when women, without
forfeiting any of the attractions of youth, are much more disposed to
please by the attractions of manner and _esprit_ than by mere beauty,
when we sat down to our game. La Baronne de Meer, my partner, was the
younger and the prettier of the two; she was one of those Flemings into
whose families the race of Spain poured the warm current of southern
blood, and gave them the dark eye and the olive skin, the graceful
figure and the elastic step, so characteristic of their nation.

'A la bonne heure,' said she, smiling; 'have we rescued one from the
enchantress?'

'Yes,' replied the abbe, with an affected gravity; 'in another moment he
was lost.'

'If you mean me,' said I, laughing, 'I assure you I ran no danger at
all; for whatever the young lady's glances may portend, she seemed very
much indisposed to bestow a second on me.'

The game proceeded with its running fire of chitchat, from which I could
gather that Mademoiselle Laura was a most established man-killer, no one
ever escaping her fascinations save when by some strange fatality they
preferred her sister Julia, whose style was, to use the abbe's phr