the end of the first week of their acquaintance he proposed. She referred
him to her brother before she could consent; and though, when Kostalergi
inquired amongst her English friends, none had ever heard of a Lord
Kilgobbin, the fact of his being Irish explained their ignorance, not to
say that Kearney's reply, being a positive refusal of consent, so fully
satisfied the Greek that it was 'a good thing,' he pressed his suit with
a most passionate ardour: threatened to kill himself if she persisted in
rejecting him, and so worked upon her heart by his devotion, or on her
pride by the thought of his position, that she yielded, and within three
weeks from the day they first met, she became the Princess of Delos.

When a Greek, holding any public employ, marries money, his Government is
usually prudent enough to promote him. It is a recognition of the merit
that others have discovered, and a wise administration marches with the
inventions of the age it lives in. Kostalergi's chief was consequently
recalled, suffered to fall back upon his previous obscurity--he had been a
commission-agent for a house in the Greek trade--and the Prince of Delos
gazetted as Minister Plenipotentiary of Greece, with the first class of
St. Salvador, in recognition of his services to the state; no one being
indiscreet enough to add that the aforesaid services were comprised
in marrying an Irishwoman with a dowry of--to quote the _Athenian
Hemera_--'three hundred and fifty thousand drachmas.'

For a while--it was a very brief while--the romantic mind of the Irish girl
was raised to a sort of transport of enjoyment. Here was everything--more
than everything--her most glowing imagination had ever conceived. Love,
ambition, station all gratified, though, to be sure, she had quarrelled
with her brother, who had returned her last letters unopened. Mathew, she
thought, was too good-hearted to bear a long grudge: he would see her
happiness, he would hear what a devoted and good husband her dear Spiridion