Thank goodness these two young Irishmen have good hearts; they need them for redemption. Both of them make no bones about their plans to marry for money. Though each maintains that he really loves the lady of his choice, they both freely admit that it was the money that first attracted them. Would Trollope have granted such a blot on the escutcheon of one of his young English heroes? Trollope's previous work, which was also his debut novel, told of the fall of an old Irish family, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, with little levity to relieve it. _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_, on the other hand, is a comic novel. One may wonder whether Trollope is laughing with the Irish or at them. The general impression is one of affection, with a sharp eye for entertaining foibles. We must follow a knotty skein of debts and obligations in a discussion of how Jerry Blake got a pair of breeches to wear for Lord Ballindine's hunt. The leather had to be purchased in Tuam, and an assistant tailor had to leave his mother's wake and stay up all night sewing. The tailor, however, had a long-standing debt for his garden, and the landlord was a distant relation of Jerry Blake. So the long and tangled circle is closed, and Jerry gets his breeches. Lord Cashel appears as an earl whose cardinal virtues were negative ones. He had learned that silence is sometimes mistaken for wisdom; he had avoided intemperance, and he had not done too many stupid things. He had avoided adultery, and since his marriage, he had not seduced any of his neighbors' daughters. He was therefore "considered a moral man." Lady Selina is the first of Trollope's high-born old maids, too proud to marry--unless someone asks her. Other examples were to include Miss Sarah Marrable in _The Vicar of Bullhampton_ and Lady Amelia De Courcy in _Dr. Thorne_. The rest of the family at Grey Abbey was "dull, solemn, slow, and respectable," but Lady Selina, daughter of the earl, exceeded them all. The "specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight."