But is it natural, is it possible, that this Sir Ulick O’Shane could so easily part with Harry Ormond, and thus “whistle him down the wind to prey at fortune?” For Harry Ormond, surely, if for any creature living, Sir Ulick O’Shane’s affection had shown itself disinterested and steady. When left a helpless infant, its mother dead, its father in India, he had taken the child from the nurse, who was too poor even to feed or clothe it as her own; and he had brought little Harry up at his castle with his own son--as his own son. He had been his darling--literally his spoiled child; nor had this fondness passed away with the prattling, playful graces of the child’s first years--it had grown with its growth. Harry became Sir Ulick’s favourite companion--hunting, shooting, carousing, as he had been his plaything during infancy. On no one occasion had Harry, violent and difficult to manage as he was to others, ever crossed Sir Ulick’s will, or in any way incurred his displeasure. And now, suddenly, without any cause, except the aversion of a wife, whose aversions seldom troubled him in any great degree, is it natural that he should give up Harry Ormond, and suffer him to sacrifice himself in vain for the preservation of a conjugal peace, which Sir Ulick ought to have known could not by such a sacrifice be preserved? Is it possible that Sir Ulick should do this? Is it in human nature? Yes, in the nature of Sir Ulick O’Shane. Long use had brought him to this; though his affections, perhaps, were naturally warm, he had on many occasions in his life sacrificed them to his scheming imaginations. Necessity--the necessity of his affairs, the consequences of his extravagance--had brought him to this: the first sacrifices had not been made without painful struggles; but by degrees his mind had hardened, and his warmth of heart had cooled. When he said or _swore_ in the most cordial manner that he “would do any thing in the world to serve a friend,” there was always a mental reservation of “any thing that does not hurt my own interest, or cross my schemes.”