by the stress of circumstances, actually driving for hire her ladyship, no less! Mary Foley--the great lord’s daughter, who was soon quitting Ireland and him. She, his partner, his girl, his intended wife--for of course if let alone, she’d have come round, and married him. And what would hinder him now, to let the young red mare run away, accidentally on purpose, and break their three necks? The present situation was enough to make a man mad. Was he not attending in the capacity of a servant, a girl whom hitherto he had considered a little beneath him in position? His mother, the daughter of a well-to-do publican, rented a small farm, had been brought up on a carpeted floor, and kept even now her own cover car. And Mary Foley, was just a good-looking, gay little creature, with fifty pounds fortune. Of course, every one knew he could have done far better, but _she_ had such pretty, joking ways with her; she had made a fool of him, and faix, by all accounts he was in good company! Then before anything was fixed comes this sort of fairy tale, and “Mary at the corner” is turned at one stroke into her ladyship, and he himself driving her like any hired boy. When she got up on the car she had just nodded at him, her face as long as a ha’porth of bacon, and said-- “Is that yer self, Pat? How are ye?” And not another word; and coming home she had never opened her mouth once. He’d make her do that, if it was only screaming--for a pin’s head, he’d upset the machine. Pat--“handsome Pat” as he was called--was about seven-and-twenty, and certainly as good-looking a fellow as could be met with in a day’s walk--and not indifferent to the fact. His was the real type of Celtic face--dark blue eyes, dark hair and brows, well-shaped, somewhat refined features, white teeth, and eyelashes so long and so effective, that to a London débutante they might have proved an asset of extraordinary value.