“Only Banthry's bigger and wider. Indeed, I may say finer.”
“Nothing, in my estimation, can exceed this!” said his Lordship, with a distinctive smile, addressed to the young lady.
“I'm glad you think so,” said she, with a merry laugh. And then, with a pirouette, she sprang up the steep steps on the rocky path before her, and disappeared, her sister as quickly following, leaving Mr. O'Reilly alone with his Lordship.
“What heaps of money she laid out here,” exclaimed O'Reilly, as he looked at the labyrinth of mad ruins, and rustic bridges, and hanging gardens on every side of him.
“Large sums—very large indeed!” said my Lord, whose thoughts were evidently on some other track.
“Pure waste—nothing else; the place never could pay. Vines and fig-trees, indeed—I'd rather see a crop of oats.”.
“I have a weakness for the picturesque, I must own,” said my Lord, as his eye still followed the retreating figures of the girls.
“Well, I like a waterfall; and, indeed, I like a summer-house myself,” said O'Reilly, as though confessing to a similar trait on his own part.
“This is the first time you have been abroad, O'Reilly?” said his Lordship, to turn the subject of the conversation.
“Yes, my Lord, my first, and, with God's blessing, my last, too! When I lost Mrs. O'Reilly, two years ago, of a complaint that beat all the doctors—”