“Oh! by all means, let us hear it,” said Trevanion. “Well, agreed,” said O’Leary; “only once for all, as what I am about to confide is strictly confidential, you must promise never even to allude to it hereafter in even the most remote manner, much less indulge in any unseemly mirth at what I shall relate.” Having pledged ourselves to secrecy and a becoming seriousness, O’Leary began his story as follows: “You may easily suppose,” began Mr. O’Leary, “that the unhappy termination of my first passion served as a shield to me for a long time against my unfortunate tendencies toward the fair, and such was really the case. I never spoke to a young lady for three years after, without a reeling in my head, so associated in my mind was love and sea-sickness. However, at last, what will not time do? It was about four years from the date of this adventure, when I became so oblivious of my former failure, as again to tempt my fortune. My present choice, in every way unlike the last, was a gay, lively girl, of great animal spirits, and a considerable turn for raillery, that spared no one; the members of her own family were not even sacred in her eyes; and her father, a reverend dean, as frequently figured among the ludicrous as his neighbors. “The Evershams had been very old friends of a rich aunt of mine, who never, by the by, had condescended to notice me till I made their acquaintance; but no sooner had I done so, than she sent for me, and gave me to understand that in the event of my succeeding to the hand of Fanny Eversham, I should be her heir and the possessor of about sixty thousand pounds. She did not stop here; but by canvassing the dean in my favor, speedily put the matter on a most favorable footing, and in less than two months I was received as the accepted suitor of the fair Fanny, then one of the reigning belles of Dublin. “They lived at this time, about three miles from town, in a very pretty country, where I used to pass all my mornings, and many of my evenings, too, in a state of happiness that I should have considered perfect, if it were not for two unhappy blots—one, the taste of my betrothed for laughing at her friends; another, the diabolical propensity of my intended father-in-law to talk politics; to the former I could submit; but with the latter submission only made bad worse; for he invariably drew up as I receded, dryly observing that with men who had no avowed opinions, it was ill-agreeing; or that, with persons who kept their politics as a school-boy does his pocket-money, never to spend, and always ready to change, it was unpleasant to dispute. Such taunts as these I submitted to, as well I might; secretly resolving, that as I now knew the meaning of Whig and Tory, I’d contrive to spend my life, after marriage, out of the worthy dean’s diocese.