eshold of life, and when it held out its more
alluring prospects.

There is something peculiarly galling to the man who is wincing under the
pang of poverty to find that the world regards him as rich and well off,
and totally beyond the accidents of fortune. It is not simply that he feels
how his every action will be misinterpreted and mistaken, and a spirit of
thrift, if not actual shabbiness, ascribed to all that he does, but he also
regards himself as a sort of imposition or sham, who has gained access to a
place he has no right to occupy, and to associate on terms of equality with
men of tastes and habits and ambitions totally above his own. It was in
this spirit he remembered Nina's chance expression, 'I don't suppose _you_
want money!' There could be no other meaning in the phrase than some
foregone conclusion about his being a man of fortune. Of course she
acquired this notion from those around her. As a stranger to Ireland,
all she knew, or thought she knew, had been conveyed by others. 'I don't
suppose _you_ want money' was another way of saying, 'You are your aunt's
heir. You are the future owner of the O'Shea estates. No vast property, it
is true; but quite enough to maintain the position of a gentleman.'

'Who knows how much of this Lord Kilgobbin or his son Dick believed?'
thought he. 'But certainly my old playfellow Kate has no faith in the
matter, or if she have, it has little weight with her in her estimate of
me.

'It was in this very room I was lodged something like five years ago. It
was at this very window I used to sit at night, weaving Heaven knows what
dreams of a future. I was very much in love in those days, and a very
honest and loyal love it was. I wanted to be very great, and very gallant,
and distinguished, and above all, very rich; but only for _her_, only that
_she_ might be surrounded with every taste and luxury that became her,
and that she should share them with me. I knew well she was better than
me--better in every way: not only purer, and simpler, and more gentle, but
more patient, more enduring, more tenacious of what was true, and more
decidedly the enemy of what was merely expedient. Then, was she not
proud? not with the pride of birth or station, or of an old name and a
time-honoured house, but proud that whatever she did or said amongst the
tenantry or the neighbours, none ever ventured to question or even qualify
the intention that suggested it. The utter impossibility of ascr