asleep over
the pages, or felt the scalding tears blinding him with the conscious
thought that he was not equal to the task before him.

Strange enough, his mother, cheated by that love which filled every
avenue of her heart, marked little of this. She thought that Tony had no
great taste for music, nor patience enough for drawing. She fancied
he deemed history dry, and rather undervalued geography. If he hated
French, it was because he was such an intense Anglican; and as to
figures, his poor dear father had no great skill in them, and indeed his
ruined fortune came of tampering with them. Though thus, item by item,
she would have been reduced to own that Tony was not much of a scholar,
she would unhesitatingly have declared that he was a remarkably gifted
boy, and equal to any condition he could be called to fulfil. There was
this much of excuse for her credulity,--he was a universal favorite.
There was not a person of any class who had other than a good word for
him; and this, be it remarked, in a country where people fall into few
raptures, and are rarely enthusiasts. The North of Ireland is indeed as
cold a soil for the affections as it is ungenial in its vegetation. Love
finds it just as hard to thrive as the young larch-trees, nipped as they
are by cutting winds and sleety storms; and to have won favor where
it is weighed out so scrupulously, implied no petty desert. There is,
however, a rigid sense of justice which never denies to accord its due
to each. Tony had gained his reputation by an honest verdict, the award
of a jury who had seen him from his childhood and knew him well.

The great house of the county was Sir Arthur Lyle's, and there Tony
Butler almost might be said to live. His word was law in the stables,
the kennel, the plantations, and the boat-quay. All liked him. Sir
Arthur, a stern but hearty old Anglo-Indian; my lady, a fine specimen of
town pretension and exclusiveness cultivated to its last perfection by
Oriental indulgence; Isabella,--a beauty and a fortune,--about to shine
at the next drawing-room, liked him; and the widowed daughter of the
house, Mrs. Trafford, whom many deemed handsomer than her sister,
and whose tact and worldly skill made even beauty but one of her
attractions, said he was "a fine creature," and "it was a thousand
pities he had not a good estate and a title." Sir Arthur's sons, three
in number, were all in India; the two elder in high civil appointments,
the younger ser