The eccentricities of her aunt's character had always served as extenuating circumstances with Mary Martin. She knew the violence of her prejudices, the enormous amount of her self-esteem, and the facility with which she was ever able to persuade herself that whatever she wished to do assumed at once all the importance and gravity of a duty! This thorough appreciation of her peculiarities enabled Mary to bear up patiently under many sore trials and some actual wrongs. Where the occasion was a light one, she could afford to smile at such trials, and, even in serious cases, they palliated the injustice; but here was an instance wherein all her forgiveness was in vain. To take the moment of her poor uncle's illness--that terrible seizure, which left him without self-guidance, if even a will--to dictate these hard and humiliating terms, was a downright cruelty. Nor did it diminish the suffering which that letter cost her that its harsh conditions seemed dictated by a spirit of contempt for Ireland and its people. As Mary re-read the letter, she felt that every line breathed this tone of depreciation. It was to her Ladyship a matter of less than indifference what became of the demesne, who inhabited the house,--the home of “the Martins” for centuries! She was as little concerned for the prestige of “the old family,” as she was interested for the sorrows of the people. If Mary endeavored to treat these things dispassionately to her own heart, by dwelling upon all the points which affected others, still, her own individual wrong would work to the surface, and the bitter and insulting suggestion made to her rose up before her in all its enormity. She did her very best to turn her thoughts into some other channel,--to fix them upon her poor uncle, on his sick-bed, and sorrowing as he was sure to be; to think of her cousin Harry, struggling against the embarrassments of his own imprudence; of the old housekeeper, Catty Broon, to whom she could not summon courage to speak the cruel tidings of her changed lot,--but all, all in vain; back she would come to the humiliation that foreshadowed her own fortune, and threatened to depose her from her station forever.