Our moralist had for some time been glancing at a broad, handsome old country mansion on the top of a wooded hill backed by a swarm of mountain heads all purple-dark under clouds flying thick to shallow, as from a brush of sepia.  The dim silver of half-lighted lakewater shot along below the terrace.  He knew the kind of sky, having oftener seen that than any other, and he knew the house before it was named to him and he had flung a discolouring thought across it.  He contemplated it placably and studiously, perhaps because the shower-folding armies of the fields above likened its shadowed stillness to that of his Irish home.  There had this woman lived!  At the name of Earlsfont she became this witch, snake, deception.  Earlsfont was the title and summary of her black story:  the reverberation of the word shook up all the chapters to pour out their poison.

CHAPTER II

MR. ADISTER

Mr. Patrick O’Donnell drove up to the gates of Earlsfont notwithstanding these emotions, upon which light matter it is the habit of men of his blood too much to brood; though it is for our better future to have a capacity for them, and the insensible race is the oxenish.

But if he did so when alone, the second man residing in the Celt put that fellow by and at once assumed the social character on his being requested to follow his card into Mr. Adister’s library.  He took his impression of the hall that had heard her voice, the stairs she had descended, the door she had passed through, and the globes she had perchance laid hand on, and the old mappemonde, and the severely-shining orderly regiment of books breathing of her whether she had opened them or not, as he bowed to his host, and in reply to, ‘So, sir!  I am glad to see you,’ said swimmingly that Earlsfont was the first house he had visited in this country:  and the scenery reminded him of his part of Ireland:  and on landing at Holyhead he had gone off straight to the metropolis by appointment to meet his brother Philip, just returned from Canada a full captain, who heartily despatched his compliments and respects, and hoped to hear of perfect health in this quarter of the world.  And Captain Con the same, and he was very flourishing.

Patrick’s opening speech concluded on the sound of a short laugh coming from Mr. Adister.

It struck the young Irishman’s ear as injurious and scornful in relation to Captain Con; but the remark ensuing calmed him: 

‘He has no children.’

‘No, sir; Captain Con wasn’t born to increase the number of our clan,’ Patrick rejoined; and thought:  By heaven!  I get a likeness of her out of you, with a dash of the mother mayhap somewhere.  This was his Puck-manner of pulling a girdle round about from what was foremost in his head to the secret of his host’s quiet observation; for, guessing that such features as he beheld would be slumped on a handsome family, he was led by the splendid severity