With a view to perfecting a new story of adventure and perfectly respectable love, she determined to isolate herself for a couple of months.

As certain Irishmen played a part in her story, she fixed upon Connacht as the place of her retirement, intending to study the romantic Celt on his native soil.

A house advertised in the columns of _The Field_ seemed to offer her the opportunity she desired.

She took it and the fishing attached to it; having bargained with her uncle, Sir Gilbert Hawkesby, that she was to be relieved of the duty of catching salmon, and that he should pay a considerable part of the heavy rent demanded by the local agent..