Between Bridgetstown and Noone lay Ballingoole, and the reasonable visiting distance of one Irish mile. Bridgetstown was a great, staring white house, with two low wings, that stood familiarly close to the road, although screened from the vulgar gaze by a high hedge of impenetrable laurels. According to Major Malone, “the front of the house was at the back,” by which truly Irish statement, he meant that all the principal apartments opened south, into a delightful pleasure-ground, shaded by fine old trees, brilliant with flowers, and bounded by the grey walls of a celebrated garden. No one, driving up to the bleak and rather mean entrance, would believe that the mere act of walking across a hall could create such a total transformation of aspect. It was like passing from winter into summer, and exchanging the shores of the White Sea for the Mediterranean. The Bridgetstown pleasure-ground was a notorious sun-trap, the rendezvous of half the bees in the Barony, and the ruination of any delicate complexion. Flowers that drooped and died elsewhere, here blazed forth in flaunting profusion; invalid cuttings sprang to health at once, and the frail, fastidious, “Marechal Niel” and “Cloth of Gold,” draped the garden entrance as with a yellow mantle. Bridgetstown was a curious anomaly. The great white mansion was out of place by the roadside, and the pretty demesne that lay to the right of a long range of walls (enclosing grounds and stable-yards) looked empty and houseless. A noble avenue of limes ran parallel to the garden, and led to no place in particular, and everywhere in general. It seemed as if the house had had a violent quarrel with the park and avenue, and was on the point of quitting the premises. The farms belonging to the property were also scattered over the country in the most inconvenient directions, but Major Malone, in his high, red-wheeled dog-cart, made a virtue of inspecting them very frequently; his care-takers could have told another tale! When his credulous wife supposed him to be making a martyr of himself, and superintending ploughing, hay-making or threshing, he was generally attending some race or coursing meeting, or framing himself in the bow window of the Kildare Street Club. Enough of the exterior of Bridgetstown. It is a raw November night; a penetrating drizzle is descending; let us go inside, and join the family at dinner.