Of course she adored Tone, the champion who had wrecked his life on behalf of three million serfs who were her brethren, and under his guidance became quite a little conspirator, niece though she was of an ultra-Protestant grandee, daughter of the attorney-general, who, as such, was crown prosecutor of her allies. It may be asked, how came her aunt to permit the girl to form such dangerous ties? The damsel was wayward, and the aunt a victim of some secret canker, over which she brooded more and more as her hair blanched. A hard tussle or two, and practically she lowered her standard. The girl went whither she listed, and chose as bosom friend Sara Curran, daughter of the member of parliament, to whom her father was deeply attached; and who had on the occasion of her uncle's tragic end struck up a queer friendship with her aunt, which flourished by reason of its incongruity. Doreen, from the time she could first toddle, had been accustomed to scour the country on ponyback in company with her cousins, and these rides--more frequently than not--had for object the Priory--a comfortable nest which Curran had taken to himself near Rathfarnham--where they were regaled on tea and cakes by little Sara, the lawyer's baby child. Sara and Doreen became fast friends as they grew up--the faster probably because Doreen, who was the elder by several years, was strong as the sapling oak, while Sara was clinging like the honeysuckle. Of course Curran, whose business kept him for many hours daily in the courts of law and House of Commons, could desire no better companion for his pet than the niece of the Countess of Glandore--the daughter of his friend and superior, Arthur Wolfe; and so as her cousins grew into men and left her more and more alone, she frequented more and more the Priory, where no one mocked her faith, and where she frequently met Theobald. Wolfe-Tone and the Emmetts met frequently at Curran's, and their large-minded talk and broad generous views seemed to her like the wind which has passed over seaweed, compared with her aunt's narrow drone, the vain self-vaunting of my Lord Clare, the drunken ribaldry and coarse jests of her cousin Lord Glandore. So she, in her goldlaced riding-habit, had come too to the tryst that she might look on her hero once again; and for propriety's sake had brought as escort Papa Curran and gentle Sara, who, though only sixteen, was already casting timid sheep's-eyes at the younger of the two Emmetts--a gownsman at this time in the University.