“Trust me, your Lordship's opinion is unfounded,” said the Lady Helen Graves; and, as the noble girl uttered the words, her eye brightened, and her cheek flushed with a better feeling than high-born “fashionables” generally deem necessary.

“Indeed!” exclaimed the Earl, looking up at the animated features of his goddaughter, “and how comes my pretty Helen to know aught of the matter? – methinks she has learned more than the mysteries of harp and lute, or the soft tones of the Italian and Spanish tongues. Come,” he continued, “sit down on this soft Ottoman, and prove the negative to my assertion – that the Irish act only from impulse, not from principle.”

“How long can an impulse last?” inquired the lady, as she seated herself at her godfather's feet, just where he wished, playfully resting her rosy cheek on his hand, as she inquired – “tell me, first, how long an impulse can last?”

“It is only a momentary feeling, my love; although acting upon it may embitter a long life.”

But an impulse cannot last for a month, can it? Then I am quite safe; and now your Lordship must listen to a true tale, and must suffer me to tell it in my own way, brogue and all; and, moreover, must have patience. It is about a peasant maiden, whom I dearly love – ay, and respect, too, and whenever I think of sweet ‘Kate Connor,’ I bless God that the aristocracy of virtue (if I dare use such a phrase) may be found, in all its lustre, in an Irish cabin.

''It was on one of the most chilly of all November days, the streets and houses filled with fog, and the few stragglers in the square, in their dark clothes, looking like dirty demons in a smoky pantomime, that papa and myself, at that outré season, when everybody is out of town, arrived here, from Brighton; he had been summoned on business, and I preferred accompanying him to remaining on the coast alone.