of a rupture between her
father and her brother of which not a day passed without a menace.

Like all men who aspire to something in Ireland, Kearney desired to see his
son a barrister; for great as are the rewards of that high career, they are
not the fascinations which appeal most strongly to the squirearchy, who
love to think that a country gentleman may know a little law and be never
the richer for it--may have acquired a profession, and yet never know what
was a client or what a fee.

That Kearney of Kilgobbin Castle should be reduced to tramping his way down
the Bachelor's Walk to the Four Courts, with a stuff bag carried behind
him, was not to be thought of; but there were so many positions in life, so
many situations for which that gifted creature the barrister of six years'
standing was alone eligible, that Kearney was very anxious his son should
be qualified to accept that L1000 or L1800 a year which a gentleman could
hold without any shadow upon his capacity, or the slightest reflection on
his industry.

Dick Kearney, however, had not only been living a very gay life in town,
but, to avail himself of a variety of those flattering attentions which
this interested world bestows by preference on men of some pretension, had
let it be believed that he was the heir to a very considerable estate, and,
by great probability, also to a title. To have admitted that he thought it
necessary to follow any career at all, would have been to abdicate these
pretensions, and so he evaded that question of the law in all discussions
with his father, sometimes affecting to say he had not made up his mind, or
that he had scruples of conscience about a barrister's calling, or that he
doubted whether the Bar of Ireland was not, like most high institutions,
going to be abolished by Act of Parliament, and all the litigation of the
land be done by deputy in Westminster Hall.

On the morning after the visitors took their departure from Kilgobbin, old
Kearney, who usually relapsed from any exercise of hospitality into a more
than ordinary amount of parsimony, sat thinking over the various economies
by which the domestic budget could be squared, and after a very long seance
with old Gill, in which the question of raising some rents and diminishing
certain bounties was discussed, he sent up the steward to Mr. Richard's
room to say he wanted to speak to him.

Dick at the time of the message was stretched full length on a sofa,
smoking a