! who could describe that embrace, or the enthusiasm with which it was
witnessed? 'God bless him to you, my lady--glory to ye both!' and 'Oh,
but he is a fine young gentleman, God bless him!' resounded on all
sides, while hats flew up in volleys that darkened the moon; and when at
length, amid the broad delighted grins of the thronging domestics, whose
sense of decorum precluded any more boisterous evidence of joy, they
reached the parlour, then giving way to the fulness of her joy the
widowed mother kissed and blessed him and wept in turn. Well might
any parent be proud to claim as son the handsome stripling who now
represented the Castle Connor family; but to her his beauty had a
peculiar charm, for it bore a striking resemblance to that of her
husband, the last O'Connor.

I know not whether partiality blinded me, or that I did no more than
justice to my friend in believing that I had never seen so handsome a
young man. I am inclined to think the latter. He was rather tall,
very slightly and elegantly made; his face was oval, and his features
decidedly Spanish in cast and complexion, but with far more vivacity
of expression than generally belongs to the beauty of that nation.
The extreme delicacy of his features and the varied animation of his
countenance made him appear even younger than his years--an illusion
which the total absence of everything studied in his manners seemed
to confirm. Time had wrought no small change in me, alike in mind and
spirits; but in the case of O'Connor it seemed to have lost its power to
alter. His gaiety was undamped, his generosity unchilled; and though
the space which had intervened between our parting and reunion was
but brief, yet at the period of life at which we were, even a shorter
interval than that of three years has frequently served to form or
DEform a character.

Weeks had passed away since the return of O'Connor, and scarce a day had
elapsed without my seeing him, when the neighbourhood was thrown into
an unusual state of excitement by the announcement of a race-ball to be
celebrated at the assembly-room of the town of T----, distant scarcely
two miles from Castle Connor.

Young O'Connor, as I had expected, determined at once to attend it; and
having directed in vain all the powers of his rhetoric to persuade his
mother to accompany him, he turned the whole battery of his logic upon
me, who, at that time, felt a reluctance stronger than that of mere
apathy to mixing in a