seem strange and almost paradoxical--but so it was--Kate
O'Donoghue's presence appeared to have wrought a most magical change in
the whole household of the O'Donoghue. The efforts they themselves made
to ward off the semblance of their fallen estate, induced a happier
frame of mind than that which resulted from daily brooding over their
misfortunes; the very struggle elicited a courage they had left long
in disuse; and the cheerfulness which at first was but assumed, grew
gradually more and more natural. To the O'Donoghue, who, for many a day,
desired no more than to fend off the evil in his own brief time; who,
with the selfishness of an old age passed in continual conflict with
poverty, only sought a life interest in their bettered fortunes, she was
a boon above all price. Her light step, her lighter laugh, her mirthful
tone of conversation, with its many anecdotes and stories of places and
people he had not heard of before, were resources against gloom that
never failed.

Sir Archy, too, felt a return to the old associations of his youth,
in the presence ef a young, beautiful, and accomplished girl, whose
gracefulness and elegance threw a halo around her as she went, and made
of that old and crumbling tower, dark with neglect, and sad with time,
a salon, teeming with its many appliances against depression, where she
herself, armed with so many fascinations, dispensed cheerfulness and
bliss on all about her. Nor was he selfish in all this. He marked with
delight the impression made upon his favourite Herbert, by his cousin's
attractive manners. How insensibly, as it were, the boy was won from
ruder pursuits, and coarser pleasures, to sit beside her as she sung,
or near her as she read; with what interest he pursued his lessons in
French, beneath her tuition, and the ardour with which he followed every
plan of study suggested by her. Sir Archibald saw all these things,
and calculated on their result with accuracy. He foresaw how Kate's
attractive gifts would throw into the shade the ruder tastes the boy's
condition in life might expose him to adopt, and thus aid him in the
great object of his whole existence--to save him, at least, from the
wreck of his house.

Mark alone seemed untouched by her presence; save that the wild excesses
of high spirit, to which from time to time he ever gave way, were
now gone, and in their place, a deep gloom, a moroseness of character
succeeded, rendering him usually silent before her,