Shall I describe Maude Hillary as she sails across the lawn this July morning? I use the word ‘sail,’ as applied to this young lady’s movements, advisedly; for there was a swimming, undulating motion in her walk, which was apt to remind one of a lovely white-sailed yacht gliding far out across an expanse of serene blue water on a summer’s day. Shall I describe her? No; if I do, stern critics will tell me that she is a very commonplace young person after all, when it is only my description that will be commonplace. Her complexion was specially fair and bright; but it was not because of her fair skin that she was beautiful. Her features were delicate and harmonious; but those who admired her most could scarcely have told you whether her nose was nearer to the Grecian or the Roman type; whether her forehead was low or high, her chin round or pointed. She was bewitching, rather than beautiful. For if Paris awarded the apple on purely technical grounds, a thousand lovely English women might have disputed the prize with Maude Hillary. But I think Paris would have wished to give her the apple, if only for the pleasure of seeing her bright face light up into new radiance with the joy of her triumph; though in strict justice he might feel himself obliged to bestow the fruit elsewhere. Miss Hillary was bewitching; and people saw her, and fell in love with her, and bowed themselves down at her feet, long before they had time to find out that she was not so very beautiful after all. She came winding in and out among the flower-beds now, and betook herself towards an open temple at one end of the terrace by the river--a temple of slender marble columns, entwined with ivy and beautiful ephemeral parasites, whose gaudy blossoms relieved the sombre green. Two gentlemen, who were disporting themselves with lawn billiards, deserted that amusement and strolled over to the temple. They went slowly enough, because they held it vulgar to be in a hurry, and they were very young, and very much used up as to all the joys and sorrows and excitements of this earth; but they were over head and ears in love with Miss Hillary notwithstanding. She was not alone. She never was alone. She had for her constant associates from four to half-a-dozen pet dogs, and Miss Julia Desmond, her companion. Miss Desmond was by no means the despised companion so popular in three-volume novels. She was a very dignified young lady, whose father had been a colonel in ever so many different armies. She was one of the Desmonds of Castle Desmond, near Limerick, and there were three peerages in her family, to say nothing of one extinct earldom, forfeited by reason of high treason on the part of its possessor, the revival of which, for his own benefit, had been the lifelong dream of Patrick Macnamara Ryan O’Brien Desmond, until death let fall a curtain on that and many other fond delusions which had survived unchanged and changeless to the last in the eternal boyhood of an Irishman’s nature.