Had I had a son to offer her, I had not offered her myself; but my eldest was already engaged, and for the worldly welfare of my second an alliance at once brilliant and opulent was necessary; for, dazzled by his real or supposed talents, I viewed his future destiny through the medium of parental ambition, and thought only of those means by which he might become great, without considering the more important necessity of his becoming happy. Yet, well aware of the phlegmatic indifference of the one, and the romantic imprudence of the other, I denied them my confidence, until the final issue of the adventure would render its revelation necessary. Nor did I suspect the possibility of their learning it by any other means; for the one never visited Ireland, and the other, as the son of Lord M--------, would find no admittance to the castle of Inismore. When a fixed determination succeeded to some months of wavering indecision, I wrote to Glorvina, with whom I had been in habits of epistolary correspondence, distantly touching on a subject I yet considered with timidity, and faintly demanding her sanction of my wishes before I unfolded them to her father, which I assured her I would not do until I could claim her openly in my own character. In the interim, however, I received a letter from her, written previous to her receipt of mine. It began thus:--“In those happy moments of boundless confidence, when the pupil and the child hung upon the instructive accents of the friend and the father, you have often said to me, ‘I am not altogether what I seem; I am not only _grateful_, but I possess a power stronger than words of convincing those to whom I owe so much of my gratitude; and should the hour of affliction ever reach _thee_, Glorvina, call on me as the friend who would fly from the remotest corner of the earth to serve, to _save_ thee.’ “_The hour of affliction is arrived--I call upon you!_” She then described the disordered state of her father’s affairs, and painted his sufferings with all the eloquence of filial sorrow, requesting my advice, and flatteringly lamenting the destiny which placed us at such a distance from each other.