The barrister, contemplating himself in the glass during the process of shaving, and scowling--not at himself, but at the visionary countenance of the sarcastic Valentine or the unctuous O'Smea, with whom he was to do battle before the day was done--might have perceived, had he chosen to consider the matter, that he was by no means the sort of person whom women call handsome. The strongly-marked eyebrows, so quick to contract above the cold blue eyes; the aquiline nose, the firmly-set lips, the massive chin, and the broad square brow, with its prominent range of perceptive organs overshadowing the eyes--these were not the component parts of a countenance on which women care to dwell with admiring glances. But that which would most likely have discomfited other men had no power to abash or to disturb the resolute spirit of Laurence O'Boyneville. Perhaps the secret of his audacity was that he had never failed in any thing. From the boyish days when he had breasted the falls of the Shannon and done battle with the power of the waters, his career had been one long hand-to-hand struggle with difficulties. Penniless, he had succeeded where other men's money had been powerless to win them success. Friendless, he had trampled upon the fallen hopes of rivals who could boast of kindred and friendship with the mighty ones of the earth. A stranger and an alien, he had won for himself wealth and renown in a country in which vulgar prejudice had made the very name of his people a byword and a reproach. Was this a man to be turned aside from his purpose because the woman with whom he had fallen in love happened to be above him in rank, and the daughter of a world with which his world had nothing in common? No. After seeing Cecil Chudleigh for the first time, Laurence O'Boyneville decided that he would never marry any other woman. On seeing her for the second time, he determined to marry _her_. The most presuming of coxcombs could scarcely have been more sublimely assured of his own invincibility. And yet the barrister had nothing in common with a coxcomb. He was only accustomed to succeed. If he wanted to do any thing, he did it; and opposition or difficulty only gave a keener zest to the process of achievement. He wanted to marry Lady Cecil Chudleigh, and he meant to marry her. She might object at first, of course. People almost always did object to his doing what he wanted to do; but he always did it. Had not his professional rivals objected to his success, and banded themselves together to keep him down, and had he not succeeded in spite of them?