es, resembling oak and birch-trees
under a tempered gale, even to the shedding of leaves, for here a
turban was picked up by Sir Lukin, there a jewelled ear-ring by the
self-constituted attendant, Mr. Thomas Redworth. At the portico rang a
wakening cheer, really worth hearing. The rain it rained, and hats were
formless,' as in the first conception of the edifice, backs were damp,
boots liquidly musical, the pipe of consolation smoked with difficulty,
with much pulling at the stem, but the cheer arose magnificently, and
multiplied itself, touching at the same moment the heavens and Diana's
heart-at least, drawing them together; for she felt exalted, enraptured,
as proud of her countrymen as of their hero.

'That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial!' she heard Mr.
Redworth say, behind her.

She turned and sent one of her brilliant glances flying over him, in
gratitude for a timely word well said. And she never forgot the remark,
nor he the look.

CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING HINTS OF DIANA'S EXPERIENCES AND OF WHAT THEY LED
TO

A fortnight after this memorable Ball the principal actors of both sexes
had crossed the Channel back to England, and old Ireland was left to
her rains from above and her undrained bogs below; her physical and her
mental vapours; her ailments and her bog-bred doctors; as to whom the
governing country trusted they would be silent or discourse humorously.

The residence of Sir Lukin Dunstane, in the county of Surrey, inherited
by him during his recent term of Indian services, was on the hills,
where a day of Italian sky, or better, a day of our breezy South-west,
washed from the showery night, gives distantly a tower to view, and a
murky web, not without colour: the ever-flying banner of the metropolis,
the smoke of the city's chimneys, if you prefer plain language. At a
first inspection of the house, Lady Dunstane did not like it, and it was
advertized to be let, and the auctioneer proclaimed it in his dialect.
Her taste was delicate; she had the sensitiveness of an invalid: twice
she read the stalking advertizement of the attractions of Copsley, and
hearing Diana call it 'the plush of speech,' she shuddered; she decided
that a place where her husband's family had lived ought not to stand
forth meretriciously spangled and daubed, like a show-booth at a fair,
for a bait; though the grandiloquent man of advertizing letters assured
Sir Lukin that a public agape for the big and gaudy mouth