"I am too comfortable in my easy chair, dear Helen: no, send it down."

"After the shock you have received, papa, perhaps you might wish to have
it from the hand of your own Cooleen Bawn?"

As the old man turned his eyes upon her they literally danced with
delight. "Ah, Willy!" said he, "is it any wonder I should love her?"

"I have often heard," replied Reilly, "that it is impossible to know
her, and not to love her. I now believe it."

"Thank you, Reilly; thank you, Willy; shake hands. Come, Helen, shake
hands with him. That's a compliment. Shake hands with him, darling.
There, now, that's all right. Yes, my love, by all means, come down and
give us tea here."

Innocent old man--the die is now irrevocably cast! That mutual pressure,
and that mutual glance. Alas! alas! how strange and incomprehensible is
human destiny!

After she had gone upstairs the old man said, "You see, Willy, how my
heart and soul are in that angelic creature. The great object, the great
delight of her life, is to anticipate all my wants, to study whatever
is agreeable to me--in fact, to make me happy. And she succeeds. Every
thing she does pleases me. By the grave of Schomberg, she's beyond all
price. It is true we never had a baronet in the family, and it would
gratify me to hear her called Lady Whitecraft; still, I say, I don't
care for rank or ambition; nor would I sacrifice my child's happiness
to either. And, between you and me, if she declines to have him, she
shan't, thats all that's to be said about it. He's quite round in