A thousand times since my arrival in this transmundane region, I have had reason to feel how much we are the creatures of situation; how insensibly our minds and our feelings take their tone from the influence of existing circumstances. You have seen me frequently the very prototype of _nonchalence_, in the midst of a circle of birthday beauties, that might have put the fabled charms of the _Mount Ida triumviri_ to the blush of inferiority. Yet here I am, groping my way down the dismantled stone stairs of a ruined castle in the wilds of Connaught, with my heart fluttering like the pulse of green eighteen, in the presence of its first love, merely because on the point of appearing before a simple rusticated girl, whose father calls himself _a prince_, with a _potatoe ridge for his dominions!_ O! with what indifference I should have met her in the drawingroom, or at the opera!--there she would have been merely a woman!--here she is the fairy vision of my heated fancy. Well, having finished the same circuitous journey that a squirrel diurnally performs in his cage, I found myself landed in a stone passage, which was terminated by the identical chamber of fatal memory already mentioned, and through the vista of a huge folding door, partly thrown back, beheld the form of Glorvina! She was alone, and bending over her harp; one arm was gracefully thrown over the instrument, which she was tuning; with the other she was lightly modulating on its chords. Too timid to proceed, yet unwilling to retreat, I was still hovering near the door, when turning round, she observed me, and I advanced. She blushed to the eyes, and returned my profound bow with a slight inclination of the head, as if I were unworthy a more marked obeisance. Nothing in the theory of sentiment could be more diametrically opposite, than the bashful indication of that crimson blush, and the haughty spirit of that graceful bow. What a logical analysis would it have afforded to Father John on innate and acquired ideas! Her blush was the effusion of nature; her bow the result of inculcation--the one spoke the native woman; the other the _ideal_ princess. I endeavoured to apologize for my intrusion; and she, in a manner that amazed me, congratulated me on my recovery; then drawing her harp towards her, she seated herself on the great Gothic couch, with a motion of the hand, and a look, that seemed to say, “there is room for you too.” I bowed my acceptance of the silent welcome invitation. Behold me then seated _tete-a-tete_ with this Irish Princess!--my right arm thrown over her harp, and her eyes riveted on my left. “Do you still feel any pain from it?” said she, so naturally, as though we had actually been discussing the accident it had sustained. Would you believe it! I never thought of making her an answer; but fastened my eyes on her face. For a moment she raised her glance to mine, and we both coloured, as if she read there--I know not what!