visit for a
month or two the seat in Ireland, which had been too long neglected,
and at which my lord would join her on his departure from his Highland
moors. So to Ireland went Lady Montfort. My lord did not join her there;
but Mr. Carr Vipont deemed it desirable for the Vipont interest that
the wedded pair should reunite at Montfort Court, where all the Vipont
family were invited to witness their felicity or mitigate their ennui.

But before proceeding another stage in this history, it becomes a just
tribute of respect to the great House of Vipont to pause and place
its past records and present grandeur in fuller display before the
reverential reader. The House of Vipont!--what am I about? The House of
Vipont requires a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER VII.

The House of Vipont,--"_Majora canamus_."

The House of Vipont! Looking back through ages, it seems as if the
House of Vipont were one continuous living idiosyncrasy, having in its
progressive development a connected unity of thought and action, so that
through all the changes of its outward form it had been moved and guided
by the same single spirit,--"_Le roi est mort; vive le roi!_"--A Vipont
dies; live the Vipont! Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House
of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest.
The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude
soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,--one of the
thousand fighting-men who sailed from Milford Haven with the stout Earl
of Pembroke, on that strange expedition which ended in the conquest of
Ireland. This gallant man obtained large grants of land in that fertile
island; some Mac or some O'----- vanished, and the House of Vipont rose.

During the reign of Richard I., the House of Vipont, though recalled to
England (leaving its Irish acquisitions in charge of a fierce cadet, who
served as middleman), excused itself from the Crusade, and, by marriage
with a rich goldsmith's daughter, was enabled to lend moneys to those
who indulged in that exciting but costly pilgrimage. In the reign
of John, the House of Vipont foreclosed its mortgages on lands thus
pledged, and became possessed of a very fair property in England, as
well as its fiefs in the sister isle.

The House of Vipont took no part in the troublesome politics of that
day. Discreetly obscure, it attended to its own fortunes, and felt small
interest in Magna Charta. During the reigns of t