A boating party to Clare Island, long planned and talked over, could find now no advocates. All Lionel's descriptions of the shooting along the rocky shores of the bay were heard unheeded; every one clung to the abbey, as if to enjoy to the very last the sense of home happiness they had known there. Even those less likely to indulge feelings of attachment were not free from the depressing influence of a last day. Nor were these sentiments confined to the visitors only. Lady Eleanor experienced a return of her former spirits in her intercourse with those whose habits and opinions all reminded her of the past, and would gladly have prolonged a visit so full of pleasant recollections. The request was, however, in vain; the Earl was to be in waiting early in the following week, Lionel's leave was only regimental, and equally limited, and each of the others had engagements and projects no less fixed and immutable. In little knots of two and three they spent the day wandering about from place to place, to take a last look of the great cliff, to visit for the last time the little wood path, whose every turning presented some new aspect of the bay and the shore. Lord Netherby attached himself to the Knight, devoting himself with a most laudable martyrdom to a morning in the farm-yard and the stable, where, notwithstanding all his efforts, his blunders betrayed how ill-suited were his habits to country life and its interests. He bore all, however, well and heroically, for he had an object in view, and that, with him, was always sufficient to induce any degree of endurance. Up to this moment he had scarcely enjoyed an opportunity of conversing with the Knight on the subject of politics. The few words they had exchanged at the cover side were all that passed between them, and although they conveyed sentiments very remote from his own, he did not entirely despair of gaining over one who evidently was less actuated by party motives than impressed by the force of strong personal convictions. “Such a man will, of course,” thought the Earl, “be in the Imperial Parliament, and carry with him great influence on every question connected with Ireland; his support of the Ministry will be all the more valuable that his reputation is intact from every stain of corruption. To withdraw him from his own country by the seductions of London life would not be easy, but he may be attached to England by ties still more binding.” Such were some of the reasonings which the wily peer revolved in his mind, and to whose aid a fortunate accident had in some measure contributed. “I believe I have never shown you our garden, my Lord,” said the Knight, who, at last taking compassion on the suffering complaisance of the Earl, proposed this change. “The season is scarcely the most flattering, but we are early in this part of Ireland. What say you if we walk thither?”