He talked well, and like most good talkers, he very often talked nonsense; for the man who weighs his sentences before he utters them, who pauses to consider the force of an argument before he launches it, is rarely a brilliant conversationalist. And sometimes it seems as if the brightest creatures of the brain are those ephemeral and unconsidered trifles which a man utters haphazard in the heat of argument or the abandonment of purposeless small-talk. Posterity values Samuel Johnson rather for the happy sayings of a convivial evening than for the ponderous polysyllables of his most carefully considered compositions. A silver salver, bearing a monster tankard of mulled claret, was brought into the drawing-room before the assembly dispersed; and in the diversion afforded by the handing about of the wine, Mr. O'Boyneville contrived to seat himself between Cecil and her aunt; and after artfully conciliating the elder lady, he drew his chair near to the little table by which the younger sat absorbed in her work. "You don't know what difficulty I had to get here to-night, Lady Cecil," he said; "and it was only because you are here that I came." "Then I am very sorry you should have come," answered Cecil gravely. "Are you still so hard-hearted?" "Mr. O'Boyneville! Is it a gentlemanly act to follow me here, where I have no power to avoid you, and to talk to me in this manner? If you come here for your own pleasure, to make one of an agreeable party, I am as happy to see you as any one else in this house can be. But if you come here to persecute me by attentions which are as ungentlemanly as they are foolish, I shall beg my aunt to take me away from this house to-morrow morning." The barrister looked at her pale proud face with an expression of profound sorrow. "That will do, Lady Cecil," he said; "that is quite enough. I thought what you said the other day might mean only a lady's negative. I thought I was too abrupt--that I surprised and offended you by my way of plunging into the subject, and so on. But I see now that I was mistaken. Good-night, Lady Cecil; I shall never offend you again." He held out his hand, but he scarcely clasped her slender fingers as they rested for one brief moment in his expansive palm. The sadness in his voice, the sorrowful expression of his face had touched her, and she felt the natural womanly desire to heal the wounds she herself had inflicted. But before she could think of any thing to say which should in some degree console the Irishman's wounded feelings, yet in no manner embolden him to renew his attack, Mr. O'Boyneville had left her, and was bidding his host good-night. Lady Cecil had to endure a lecture from her aunt before she shut herself in her own room that night; and when she went to bed it was to think compassionately of the Irish barrister's sorrow.