“Oh, we will—­we won’t say a word about it; but she’ll never change her mind because of her money, will she?”

“That’s what would make me love a man twice the more,” said Guss; “or at any rate show it twice the stronger.”

“Frank,” said the anxious mother, “for heaven’s sake don’t let anything stand between you and Lord Cashel; think what a thing it is you’d lose!  Why; it’d pay all the debts, and leave the property worth twice what it ever was before.  If Lord Cashel thinks you ought to give up the hounds, do it at once, Frank; anything rather than quarrel with him.  You could get them again, you know, when all’s settled.”

“I’ve given up quite as much as I intend for Lord Cashel.”

“Now, Frank, don’t be a fool, or you’ll repent it all your life:  what does it signify how much you give up to such a man as Lord Cashel?  You don’t think, do you, that he objects to our being at Kelly’s Court?  Because I’m sure we wouldn’t stay a moment if we thought that.”

“Mother, I wouldn’t part with a cur dog out of the place to please Lord Cashel.  But if I were to do everything on earth at his beck and will, it would make no difference:  he will never let me marry Fanny Wyndham if he can help it; but, thank God, I don’t believe he can.”

“I hope not—­I hope not.  You’ll never see half such a fortune again.”

“Well, mother, say nothing about it one way or the other, to anybody.  And as you now know how the matter stands, it’s no good any of us talking more about it till I’ve settled what I mean to do myself.”

“I shall hate her,” said Sophy, “if her getting all her brother’s money changes her; but I’m sure it won’t.”  And so the conversation ended.

Lord Ballindine had not rested in his paternal halls the second night, before he had commenced making arrangements for a hunt breakfast, by way of letting all his friends know that he was again among them.  And so missives, in Guss and Sophy’s handwriting, were sent round by a bare-legged little boy, to all the Mounts, Towns, and Castles, belonging to the Dillons, Blakes, Bourkes, and Browns of the neighbourhood, to tell them that the dogs would draw the Kelly’s Court covers at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday morning, and that the preparatory breakfast would be on the table at ten.  This was welcome news to the whole neighbourhood.  It was only on the Sunday evening that the sportsmen got the intimation, and very busy most of them were on the following Monday to see that their nags and breeches were all right—­fit to work and fit to be seen.  The four Dillons, of Ballyhaunis, gave out to their grooms a large assortment of pipe-clay and putty-powder.  Bingham Blake, of Castletown, ordered a new set of girths to his hunting saddle; and his brother Jerry, who was in no slight degree proud of his legs, but whose nether trappings were rather the worse from the constant work of a heavy season, went so far as to go forth very early