coming pages? That she was proud of her birth, proud of being an
Irish Desmond, proud even of her poverty, so much I may say of her,
even at that early age. In that she was careless of the world's
esteem, fond to a fault of romance, poetic in her temperament, and
tender in her heart, she shared the ordinary--shall I say foibles or
virtues?--of so many of her sex. She was passionately fond of her
brother, but not nearly equally so of her mother, of whom the
brother was too evidently the favoured child.

She had lived much alone; alone, that is, with her governess and
with servants at Desmond Court. Not that she had been neglected by
her mother, but she had hardly found herself to be her mother's
companion; and other companions there she had had none. When she was
sixteen her governess was still with her; but a year later than that
she was left quite alone, except inasmuch as she was with her
mother.

She was sixteen when she first began to ask questions of Owen
Fitzgerald's face with those large eyes of hers; and she saw much of
him and he of her, for the twelve months immediately after that.
Much of him, that is, as much goes in this country of ours, where
four or five interviews in as many months between friends is
supposed to signify that they are often together. But this
much-seeing occurred chiefly during the young earl's holidays. Now
and again he did ride over in the long intervals, and when he did do
so was not frowned upon by the countess; and so, at the end of the
winter holidays subsequent to that former winter in which the earl
had had his tumble, people through the county began to say that he
and the countess were about to become man and wife.