f her suppose
for a moment that her brother was serious: a reflection that relieved
her from much anxiety of mind and embarrassment on his account.

"Papa," said, she, whilst her beautiful features were divided, if we may
so say, between smiles and tears, "papa, Dunroe is only jesting; I am
sure he is only jesting, and does not mean any serious disrespect to
religion."

"That may be, my dear Emily; but he will allow me to tell him that it
is the last subject upon which he, or any one else, should jest. Whether
you are in jest or earnest, my dear Dunroe, let me advise you to bring
the moral courage and energies of a man to the contemplation of your
life, in the first place; and in the next, to its improvement. It is not
reading the Bible, nor repeating prayers, that will, of themselves, make
you religious, unless the heart is in earnest; but a correct knowledge
of what is right and wrong--in other words, of human duty--will do much
good in the first place; with a firm resolution to avoid the evil and
adopt the good. Remember that you are accountable to the Being who
placed you in this life, and that your duty here consists, not in the
indulgence of wild and licentious passions, but in the higher and nobler
ones of rendering as many of your fellow-creatures happy as you can:
for such a course will necessarily insure happiness to yourself. This is
enough for the present; as soon as you recover your strength you shall
come to Ireland."

"When I recover my strength!" he exclaimed. "Ay, to be eaten like a
titbit. Heavens, what a delicious morsel a piece of a young peer would
be to such fellows! but I will not run that horrible risk. Lucy must
come to me--I am sure the prospect of a countess's coronet ought to be
a sufficient inducement to her. But, to think that I should run the risk
of being shot from behind a hedge--made a component part of a midnight
bonfire, or entombed in the bowels of some Patagonian cannibal, savagely
glad to feed, upon the hated Saxon who has so often fed upon him!--No,
I repeat, Lucy, if she is to be a countess, must travel in this
direction."

The indelicacy and want of all consideration for the feelings of his
father, so obvious in his heartless allusion to a fact which could
only result from that father's death, satisfied the old man that any
reformation in his son was for the present hopeless, and even Lady Emily
felt anxious to put an end to the visit as soon as possible.

"By the way," sa