"But you will try. Say that you will try because I have asked you."

He promised that he would, and then went his way, proud in his heart
at this solicitude. And how could he not be proud? was she not high
in rank, proud in character, beautiful withal, and the mother of
Clara Desmond? What sweeter friend could a man have; what counsellor
more potent to avert those dangers which now hovered round his head?

And as he rode home he was half in love with the countess. Where is
the young man who has not in his early years been half in love with
some woman older, much older than himself, who has half conquered
his heart by her solicitude for his welfare?--with some woman who
has whispered to him while others were talking, who has told him in
such gentle, loving tones of his boyish follies, whose tenderness
and experience together have educated him and made him manly? Young
men are so proud, proud in their inmost hearts, of such tenderness
and solicitude, as long as it remains secret and wrapt, as it were,
in a certain mystery. Such liaisons have the interests of intrigue,
without--I was going to say without its dangers. Alas! it may be
that it is not always so.

Owen Fitzgerald as he rode home was half in love with the countess.
Not that his love was of a kind which made him in any way desirous
of marrying her, or of kneeling at her feet and devoting himself to
her for ever; not that it in any way interfered with the other love
which he was beginning to feel for her daughter. But he thought with
pleasure of the tone of her voice, of the pressure of her hand, of
the tenderness which he had found in her eye.