I have no means of knowing if such were the case here: I can but surmise from other circumstances the causes which were in operation. It is enough, however, if I state that long before Gabriac had passed the limit of admiration for Polly, she had conceived for him a strong sentiment of love; and while he was merely exerting those qualities which are amongst the common gifts of his class and his country, she was becoming impressed with the notion of his vast superiority to all of those she had ever met in society. It must be taken into account that his manner towards her evinced a degree of respect and devotion which, though not overpassing the usual observance of good manners in France, contrasted very favorably with the kind of notice bestowed by country gentlemen upon “the Grinder's daughter.” Those terrible traditions of exorbitant interest, those fatal compacts with usury, that had made Fagan's name so dreadfully notorious in Ireland, were all unknown to Gabriac. He only saw in Polly a very handsome girl, of a far more than common amount of intelligence, and with a spirit daringly ambitious. As the favored friend and companion of his cousin, he took it for granted that the peculiar customs of Ireland admitted such intimacies between those socially unequal, and that there was nothing strange or unusual in seeing her where she was. He therefore paid her every attention he would have bestowed on the most high-born damsel of his own court; he exhibited that deference which his own language denominated homage; and, in fact, long before he had touched her affections, he had flattered her pride and self-love by a courtesy to which she had never, in all her intercourse with the world, been habituated. Perhaps my reader needs not one-half of the explanation to surmise why two young people--both good-looking, both attractive, and both idle--should, in the solitude of a country cottage, fall in love with each other. That they did so, at all events,--she first, and he afterwards,--is, however, the fact; and now, by the simple-hearted arrangement of my poor mother,--whose thoughts had never taken in such a casualty,--were they to set off together as fellow-travellers for Dublin. So far, indeed, from even suspecting such a possibility, it was only a few days previously that she had been deploring to Polly her cousin's fickleness in breaking off his proposed marriage in France, on the mere ground that his absence must necessarily have weakened the ties that bound him to his betrothed What secret hopes the revelation may have suggested to Polly's mind is matter that I cannot even speculate on.