native pride as much as it excited
public curiosity; and the rapidity with which the most splendid mansion
in Stephen's-green was prepared for his reception, vied in interest with
the speculation, as to what possible cause had induced him to come and
live there. The rumours of his intended magnificence, and the splendour
of his equipage, furnished gossip for the town, and paragraphs for the
papers.

It was, indeed, a wondrous change for those two young girls--from the
stillness and solitude of Glenflesk, to the gaiety of the capital--from
a life of reflection and retirement, to the dazzling scenes and
fascinating pleasures of a new world. Upon Sybella the first effect was
to increase her natural timidity--to render her more cautious, as she
found herself surrounded by influences so novel and so strange; and in
this wise there was mingled with her enjoyment, a sense of hesitation
and fear, that tinged all her thoughts, and even impressed themselves
upon her manner. Not so with Kate: the instinct that made her feel
at home in the world, was but the consciousness of her own powers of
pleasing. She loved society as the scene, where, however glossed over by
conventionalities, human passions and feelings were at work, and
where the power of influencing or directing others gave a stimulus to
existence, far higher and nobler than all the pleasures of retirement.
It was life, in fact. Each day had its own separate interests,
dramatizing, as it were, the real, and making of the ordinary events of
the world a romance, of which she felt herself a character. As much an
actor as spectator, she threw herself into the pleasures of society with
a zest which need only have the accompaniments of youth, beauty, and
talents, to make it contagious. Thus differing in character, as in
appearance, these two young girls at once became the acknowledged
beauties of the capital, and each was followed by a troop of admirers,
whose enthusiasm exhibited itself in a hundred different ways. Their
favourite colours at a ball became the fashionable emblems of the next
day on the promenade, and even the ladies caught up the contagion, and
enlisted themselves into parties, whose rivalry amused none so much as
those, in whom it had its origin.

While the galling enmity of Celt to Saxon was then stirring in secret
the hearts of thousands in the country, and fashioning itself into the
elements of open insurrection, the city was divided by a more peaceful
an