o do her duty, and her
conduct was not misjudged, at any rate at Castle Richmond.

"You must not think harshly of mamma," said Clara to her future
mother-in-law.

"Oh no," said Lady Fitzgerald. "I certainly do not think harshly of
her. In her position I should probably have acted as she has done."
The difference, however, between them was this, that it was all
but impossible that Lady Fitzgerald should not sympathize with her
children, while it was almost impossible that the Countess of Desmond
should do so.

And so Lady Desmond remained all alone at Desmond Court, brooding
over the things as they now were. For the present it was better that
Clara should remain at Castle Richmond, and nothing therefore was
said of her return on either side. She could not add to her mother's
comfort at home, and why should she not remain happy where she was?
She was already a Fitzgerald in heart rather than a Desmond; and
was it not well that she should be so? If she could love Herbert
Fitzgerald, that was well also. Since the day on which he had
appeared at Desmond Court, wet and dirty and wretched, with a broken
spirit and fortunes as draggled as his dress, he had lost all claim
to be a hero in the estimation of Lady Desmond. To her those only
were heroes whose pride and spirit were never draggled; and such a
hero there still was in her close neighbourhood.

Lady Desmond herself was a woman of a mercenary spirit; so at least
it will be said and thought of her. But she was not altogether so,
although the two facts were strong against her that she had sold
herself for a title, and had been willing to sell her daughter for
a fortune. Poverty she herself had endured upon the whole with
patience; and though she hated and scorned it from her very soul, she
would now have given herself in marriage to a poor man without rank
or station,--she, a countess, and the mother of an earl; and that
she would have done with all the romantic love of a girl of sixteen,
though she was now a woman verging upon forty!

Men and women only know so much of themselves and others as
circumstances and their destiny have allowed to appear. Had it
perchance fallen to thy lot, O my forensic friend, heavy laden
with the wisdom of the law, to write tales such as this of mine,
how charmingly might not thy characters have come forth upon the
canvas--how much more charmingly than I can limn them! While, on the
other hand, ignorant as thou now tellest me that I am o