Lord Cashel felt that he could not interfere, further than by remarking that it appeared his young friend was determined to leave the turf with eclat; and Fanny Wyndham could only be silent and reserved for one evening.  This occurred about four months before the commencement of my tale, and about five before the period fixed for the marriage; but, at the time at which Lord Ballindine will be introduced in person to the reader, he had certainly made no improvement in his manner of going on.  He had, during this period, received from Lord Cashel a letter intimating to him that his lordship thought some further postponement advisable; that it was as well not to fix any day; and that, though his lordship would always be welcome at Grey Abbey, when his personal attendance was not required at the Curragh, it was better that no correspondence by letter should at present be carried on between him and Miss Wyndham; and that Miss Wyndham herself perfectly agreed in the propriety of these suggestions.

Now Grey Abbey was only about eight miles distant from the Curragh, and Lord Ballindine had at one time been in the habit of staying at his friend’s mansion, during the period of his attendance at the race-course; but since Lord Cashel had shown an entire absence of interest in the doings of Finn M’Coul, and Fanny had ceased to ask after Granuell’s cough, he had discontinued doing so, and had spent much of his time at his friend Walter Blake’s residence at the Curragh.  Now, Handicap Lodge offered much more dangerous quarters for him than did Grey Abbey.

In the meantime, his friends in Connaught were delighted at the prospect of his bringing home a bride.  Fanny’s twenty thousand were magnified to fifty, and the capabilities even of fifty were greatly exaggerated; besides, the connection was so good a one, so exactly the thing for the O’Kellys!  Lord Cashel was one of the first resident noblemen in Ireland, a representative peer, a wealthy man, and possessed of great influence; not unlikely to be a cabinet minister if the Whigs came in, and able to shower down into Connaught a degree of patronage, such as had never yet warmed that poor unfriended region.  And Fanny Wyndham was not only his lordship’s ward, but his favourite niece also!  The match was, in every way, a good one, and greatly pleasing to all the Kellys, whether with an O or without, for “shure they were all the one family.”

Old Simeon Lynch and his son Barry did not participate in the general joy.  They had calculated that their neighbour was on the high road to ruin, and that he would soon have nothing but his coronet left.  They could not, therefore, bear the idea of his making so eligible a match.  They had, moreover, had domestic dissensions to disturb the peace of Dunmore House.  Simeon had insisted on Barry’s taking a farm into his own hands, and looking after it.  Barry had declared his inability to do so, and had nearly petrified the old man by expressing a wish to go to Paris.  Then, Barry’s debts had showered in, and Simeon had pledged himself not to pay them.  Simeon had threatened to disinherit Barry; and Barry had called his father a d——­d obstinate old fool.