one anywhere?'

Caroline stood at her piano, turning over the leaves of a music-book,
with a pressure on her eyelids. She was near upon being thrilled in
spite of an astonishment almost petrifying: and she could nearly have
smiled, so strange was his fraternal adoption, amounting to a
vivification--of his brother's passion. He seemed quite naturally to
impersonate Philip. She wondered, too, in the coolness of her alien
blood, whether he was a character, or merely an Irish character. As to
the unwontedness of the scene, Ireland was chargeable with that; and
Ireland also, a little at his expense as a citizen of the polite world,
relieved him of the extreme ridicule attached to his phrases and images.

She replied: 'We have no portrait.'

'May I beg to know, have you seen him?' said Patrick. Caroline shook her
head.

'Is there no telling what he is like, Miss Adister?'

'He is not young.'

'An old man!'

She had not said that, and she wished to defend her cousin from the
charge of contracting such an alliance, but Patrick's face had brightened
out of a gloom of stupefaction; he assured her he was now ready to try
his voice with hers, only she was to excuse a touch of hoarseness; he
felt it slightly in his throat: and could he, she asked him, wonder at
it after his morning's bath?