her brother's, its challenging tilt was not unattractive. To these
charms must be added shining masses of dark hair, and a complexion of
so vivid a tone, that it seemed sometimes as though a fog of carmine
coloured the very atmosphere about her glowing face. She radiated
vitality, the richness and abundance of high summer; she suggested a
darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly, and in the delicate radiance of the
spring woods, she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of
leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens and greys.

It is indeed hardly fair to expect of Tishy Mangan that she should be
worthy of such a setting as southern Irish woods can offer in the
month of May. It is the month of the Mother of God, and in the fair
demesne of Coppinger's Court, Heaven had truly visited the earth, and
was chiefly and specially manifest in the Wood of the Ownashee. The
trees stood with their feet bathed in the changeful, passionate blue
of the wild hyacinths, a blue that lay sometimes in deep pools,
sometimes in thin drifts, like the azure of far skies; the pale ferns
rose in it, "like sweet thoughts in a dream"; the grey stems of the
beeches were chequered with the sunlight that their thin branches and
little leaves tried in vain to baffle and keep at bay. From the unseen
river came varying voices; sometimes a soft chuckle that had the
laughing heart of the spring in it, sometimes a rich and rushing
harmony, that told of distant heights and the wind on the hills. There
was a blackbird who was whistling over and over again the opening bar
of the theme of a presto, that, only last week, Larry had heard,
whipped out with frolic glee by the violins of a London orchestra. He
wondered if, with such themes, it is the blackbirds who inspire the
musicians, or if both have access to the same secret well of music, in
which each can dip his little bucket, and bring listeners in the outer
world a taste of the living water of melody. But since (in spite of