use whatever.'

With Mrs. Rooney, on the other hand, there was considerable difficulty.
The holy alliance she had contracted with the sovereigns had suggested
so much of grandeur to her expectations that she dreamed of nothing but
archdukes and counts of the empire, and was at first quite inexorable
at the bare idea of the _mesalliance_ that awaited her ward. A chance
decided what resisted every species of argument. Corny Delany, who had
been sent with a note to Mr. Rooney, happened to be waiting in the hall
while Mrs. Rooney passed out to her carriage escorted by the 'Tartar'
of whom we have already made mention. Mrs. Rooney was communicating her
orders to her bearded attendant by a code of signals on her fingers,
when Corny, who watched the proceeding with increasing impatience,
exclaimed--

'Arrah, can't you tell the man what you want? Sure, though you have him
dressed like a wild baste, he doesn't forget English.'

[Illustration: 3-208]

It is a Tartar!' said Mrs. Rooney, with a contemptuous sneer at Corny
and a forbidding wave of her hand ordaining silence.

'A Tarther! Oh, blessed Timothy! there's a name for one that comes of
dacent people! He's a county Oarlow man, and well known he is in the
same parts. Many a writ he served--eh, Tim?'

'Tim!' said Mrs. Rooney, in horror, as she beheld her wild-looking
friend grin from ear to ear, with a most fearful significance of what he
heard.

'It wasn't my fault, ma'am, at all,' said the Tartar, with a very Dublin
accent in the words; 'it was the master made me.'

What further explanation Tim might have afforded it is difficult to say,
for Mrs. Rooney's nerves had received too severe and too sudden a shock.
A horrible fear lest all the kingly and royal personages by whom she had
been for some weeks surrounded might only turn out to be Garlow men, or
something as unsubstantial, beset her; a dreadful unbelief of everything
and everybody seized upon her, and quite overcome, she fainted. O'Grady,
who happened to come up at the instant, learned the whole secret at
once, and with his wonted readiness resolved to profit by it. Mrs. Paul
returned to the drawing-room, and ere half an hour was fully persuaded
that as General Hinton was about to depart for Ireland as Commander of
the Forces, the alliance was on the whole not so deplorable as she had
feared.

To reconcile so many conflicting interests, to conciliate so many
totally opposite characters, was a work I should c