him from her coronet.

But the Countess of Desmond was not the only lady at Desmond Court.
I have before said that she had a daughter, the Lady Clara, the
heroine of this coming story; and it may be now right that I should
attempt some short description of her; her virtues and faults, her
merits and defects. It shall be very short; for let an author
describe as he will, he cannot by such course paint the characters
of his personages on the minds of his readers. It is by gradual,
earnest efforts that this must be done--if it be done. Ten, nay,
twenty pages of the finest descriptive writing that ever fell from
the pen of a novelist will not do it.

Clara Desmond, when young Fitzgerald first saw her, had hardly
attained that incipient stage of womanhood which justifies a mother
in taking her out into the gaieties of the world. She was then only
sixteen; and had not in her manner and appearance so much of the
woman as is the case with many girls of that age. She was shy and
diffident in manner, thin and tall in person. If I were to say that
she was angular and bony, I should disgust my readers, who,
disliking the term, would not stop to consider how many sweetest
girls are at that age truly subject to those epithets. Their
undeveloped but active limbs are long and fleshless, the contour of
their face is the same, their elbows and shoulders are pointed,
their feet and hands seem to possess length without breadth. Birth
and breeding have given them the frame of beauty, to which coming
years will add the soft roundness of form, and the rich glory of
colour. The plump, rosy girl of fourteen, though she also is very
sweet, never rises to such celestial power of feminine grace as she
who is angular and bony, whose limbs are long, and whose joints are