But how lovely she was; and what a thrill ran through his arm as he held her hand in his for a moment.

Where should he find a girl like that in England with such colour, such eyes, such hair, such innocence,--and then with so sweet a voice?
As he hurried down the hill to the beach at Coolroone, where Morony was to meet him with the boat, he could not keep himself from comparisons between Kate O'Hara and Sophie Mellerby.

No doubt his comparisons were made very incorrectly,--and unfairly; but they were all in favour of the girl who lived out of the world in solitude on the cliffs of Moher.

And why should he not be free to seek a wife where he pleased?
In such an affair as that,--an affair of love in which the heart and the heart alone should be consulted, what right could any man have to dictate to him?
Certain ideas occurred to him which his friends in England would have called wild, democratic, revolutionary and damnable, but which, owing perhaps to the Irish air and the Irish whiskey and the spirit of adventure fostered by the vicinity of rocks and ocean, appeared to him at the moment to be not only charming but reasonable also.

No doubt he was born to high state and great rank, but nothing that his rank and state could give him was so sweet as his liberty.