“No,” replied his father, who could not help smiling in return, “not at all, John.  Emily will not require to be brought out, nor paraded through the debasing formalities of fashion.  She shall not be excluded from fashion, certainly; but neither shall I suffer her to run the vulgar gauntlet of heartless dissipation, which too often hardens, debases, and corrupts.  But a truce to this; the subject is painful to me; let us change it.”

The last observation of Dunroe to his sister startled her so much that she blushed deeply, and looked with that fascinating timidity which is ever associated with innocence and purity from her brother to her father.

“Have I said anything wrong, papa?” she asked, when Lord Cullamore had ceased to speak.

“Nothing, my love, nothing, but precisely what was natural and right.  Dunroe’s reply, however, was neither the one nor the other, and he ought to have known it.”

“Well now, Emily,” said her brother, “I don’t regret it, inasmuch as it has enabled me to satisfy myself upon a point which I have frequently heard disputed—­that is, whether a woman is capable of blushing or not.  Now I have seen you blush with my own eyes, Emily; nay, upon my honor, you blush again this moment.”

“Dunroe,” observed his father, “you are teasing your sister; forbear.”

“But don’t you see, my lord,” persisted his son, “the absolute necessity for giving her a course of fashionable life, if it were only to remove this constitutional blemish.  If it were discovered, she is ruined; to blush being, as your lordship knows, contrary to all the laws and statutes of fashion in that case made and provided.”

“Dunroe,” said his father, “I intend you shall spend part of the summer and all the autumn in Ireland, with us.”

“Oh, yes, John, you must come,” said his sister, clapping her snow-white hands in exultation at the thought.  “It will be so delightful.”

“Ireland!” exclaimed Dunroe, with well-feigned surprise; “pray where is that, my lord?”

“Come, come, John,” said his father, smiling; “be serious.”

“Ireland!” he again exclaimed; “oh, by the way, that’s an island, I think, in the Pacific—­is it not?”

“No,” replied his father; “a more inappropriate position you could not have possibly found for it.”

“Is not that the happy country where the people live without food?  Where they lead a life of independence, and starve in such an heroic spirit?”

“My dear Dunroe,” said his father, seriously, “never sport with the miseries of a people, especially when that people are your own countrymen.”

“My lord,” he replied, disregarding the rebuke he had received, “for Heaven’s sake conceal that disgraceful fact.  Remember, I am a young nobleman; call me profligate—­spendthrift—­debauchee—­anything you will but an Irishman.  Don’t the Irish refuse beef and mutton, and take to eating each other?  What can be said of a people who, to please their betters, practise starvation as their natural pastime, and dramatize hunger to pamper their most affectionate lords and masters, who, whilst the latter witness the comedy, make the performers pay for their tickets?  And yet, although the cannibal system flourishes, I fear they find it anything but a Sandwich island.”