Barra, with unboiled peas in his shoes; had forgiven his tenants
five years' rent all round, and never drank wine or washed himself
after the death of his lady wife.

At the present moment the Desmonds were not so potent either for
good or ill. The late earl had chosen to live in London all his
life, and had sunk down to be the toadying friend, or perhaps I
should more properly say the bullied flunky, of a sensual,
wine-bibbing, gluttonous----king. Late in life when he was broken in
means and character, he had married. The lady of his choice had been
chosen as an heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup
of fortune and his lip; and she, proud and beautiful, for such she
had been--had neither relieved nor softened the poverty of her
profligate old lord.

She was left at his death with two children, of whom the eldest,
Lady Clara Desmond, will be the heroine of this story. The youngest,
Patrick, now Earl of Desmond, was two years younger than his sister,
and will make our acquaintance as a lad fresh from Eton.

In these days money was not plentiful with the Desmonds. Not but
that their estates were as wide almost as their renown, and that the
Desmonds were still great people in the country's estimation.
Desmond Court stood in a bleak, unadorned region, almost among the
mountains, halfway between Kanturk and Maccoom, and the family had
some claim to possession of the land for miles around. The earl of
the day was still the head landlord of a huge district extending
over the whole barony of Desmond, and half the adjacent baronies of
Muskerry and Duhallow; but the head landlord's rent in many cases
hardly amounted to sixpence an acre, and even those sixpences did