“How did you say he effected it, Mr. Linton?” said the old deaf Countess of Dumdrum, making an ear-trumpet of her hand.
“By doing what Mr. Meek won't do with the Catholics, my Lady,—taking the bull by the horns.”
“Don't you think he found conciliation of service besides?” suggested Mr. Meek, with an angelic simplicity.
“Isn't he handsome! how graceful! So like a Corsair,—one of Byron's heroes. I 'm dying to know him. Dear me, how those Kennyfeck girls eat him up. Olivia never takes her eyes off him. He looks so bored, poor fellow! he 's longing to be let alone.” Such were the muttered comments on the new object of Dublin curiosity, who himself was very far from suspecting that his personal distinction had less share in his popularity than his rent-roll and his parchments.
As we are more desirous of recording the impression he himself created, than of tracing how others appeared to him, we shall make a noiseless turn of the salons, and, spy-fashion, listen behind the chairs.
“So you don't think him even good-looking, Lady Kilgoff?” said Mr. Linton, as he stood half behind her seat.
“Certainly not more than good-looking, and not so much as nice-looking,—very awkward, and ill at ease he seems.”
“That will wear off when he has the good taste to give up talking to young ladies, and devote himself to the married ones.”
“Enchanting,—positively enchanting, my dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Leicester White to a young friend beside her. “That description of the forest, over which the lianas formed an actual roof, the golden fruit hanging a hundred feet above the head, was the most gorgeous picture I ever beheld.”
“I wish you could persuade him,” lisped a young lady with large blue eyes, and a profusion of yellow hair in ringlets, “to write that little story of the Zambo for Lady Blumter's Annual.”