She was beautiful, proud, and clever; and if it would suit her to marry a handsome young fellow with a good house and an unembarrassed income of eight hundred a year, why should she not do so?
As for him, would it not be a great thing for him to have a countess for his wife, and an earl for his stepson?
What ideas the countess had on this subject we will not just now trouble ourselves to inquire.

But as to young Owen Fitzgerald, we may declare at once that no thought of such a wretched alliance ever entered his head.

He was sinful in many things, and foolish in many things.

But he had not that vile sin, that unmanly folly, which would have made a marriage with a widowed countess eligible in his eyes, merely because she was a countess, and not more than fifteen years his senior.

In a matter of love he would as soon have thought of paying his devotions to his far-away cousin, old Miss Barbara Beamish, of Ballyclahassan, of whom it was said that she had set her cap at every unmarried man that had come into the west riding of the county for the last forty years.