Of course it was all right for James to amuse himself with this poor girl; but the idea of marriage was not to be thought of. But as this gentlemanly family were down in Virginia and pretty Nora Bright among the mountains of Pennsylvania, they were not in a position to use their family influence effectively. But they published their ukase for all that, which was to the effect that James must relinquish this artful girl, or be banished forever from the family. But James did not relinquish the girl, being commonplace and ungentlemanly enough to marry her after having won her heart. So he submitted to being banished with as good grace as possible. Only once in all those years had that banishment been broken. That was shortly after the birth of Norine. Then, indeed, they had received a visit from his only sister. The visit was of very short duration, in fact, not longer than one short half-hour. It had been long enough, however, to permit of many bitter words on both sides, and to complete the banishment forever. It had done more than that. It had made this man so bitterly ashamed of his sister’s heartless proposition, that he resented it by banishing the name, as the family had already banished him. And from that day, James Darling was satisfied to become plain James Bright; and so in time, old Pat being obliged to die, whether he wanted to or not, was well enough satisfied with his children to leave them the farm that he had struggled so hard to obtain. And his daughter had been satisfied to work for and wait on her gentlemanly husband--whom it is presumed she loved--and to care for and educate her two children, whom she adored, until at last she was obliged to die too; and then this gentleman, knowing that thereafter he would be obliged to wait upon himself, was better satisfied to join his wife; so without having injured the world one particle by his gentlemanly sojourn in it, he died. As for the good he had done--well, that was nearly as hard to define as was the injury. He had been an honorable man, of high breeding, and he had left the impress of his better qualities upon his children, and without troubling himself greatly about their education, he had instilled into them something of the grace and gentle manners that he had been accustomed to in polite society. It might be doubted that he had benefited them much in this. It had only served as yet to make them conspicuous. They spoke a different language from their neighbors; Norine alone retaining a slight, almost imperceptible trace of the soft Gaelic of her mother’s tongue--just enough to give at times a quaint piquancy to her conversation. In all other points they were essentially well-bred, with a taste for reading polite literature not altogether compatible with their surroundings.