ilding, devoted his early years to planting and laying out
pleasure grounds round the new house. His wife, a French woman of Irish
extraction, brought a cultivated taste to his aid. No doubt her ideas
and her husband's energy would in the end have created a beautiful and
satisfying demesne round Dunseveric House if it had not been for the
north wind and the sea spray. These were hard enemies for a landscape
gardener to fight, and when Lady Dunseveric died her husband gave up the
struggle, having nothing better to show for his time and money than some
fringes of dejected-looking alders and a few groves of stunted Scotch
firs. He even neglected the glass houses which his wife had built. Irish
politics became extremely interesting just after Lady Dunseveric died,
and an Irish gentleman might well be forgiven for neglecting the culture
of his demesne when his time was occupied with drilling Volunteers,
passing Grand Jury resolutions in support of the use of Irish
manufactured goods, and subsequently preparing schemes for the internal
development of Ireland.

Thus Dunseveric House was by no means an attractive place to Estelle,
Comtesse de Tour-neville, when she first visited it. Accustomed to the
scenery round her dead husband's chateau in the valley of the Loire, and
attached to the life of the French Court, the appearance of Dunseveric
House struck her as utterly dismal. She had every reason beforehand to
suppose that it would be dismal, and was quite convinced that it would
not suit her as a place of residence. Forced to flee from France in
1793, she put off taking refuge in her brother-in-law's house as long
as possible, and only arrived there after spending three years among
hospitable friends in England.

"The poor Marie, my poor sister," she said, when Lord Dunseveric, at
the end of the long drive from Ballymoney, turned the horses up the bare
avenue.

To her maid, in the privacy of her bedroom, she opened her grief more
fully.

"I remember very well when my sister married, though I was but a little
girl at the time, eight or perhaps nine years old. I remember that all
the world talked of her handsome Irish husband. He was a fine man then.
He is a fine man still, and has the grand manner. Oh, yes, he is very
well. And my nephew. He is well made, big and strong like all the men
of his race and blood. But he has no manner--none. If only my sister had
lived she might have formed him. But--poor Marie!"

She sighed.