“What is that?” said Bride smiling at her friend’s vehemence. “A wealthy amateur who thinks he can act but can’t,” said Evereld. “Oh, if you knew what we have endured all the autumn from an empty-headed fellow, who thought himself a genius!” “What did he do?” said Bride. “What did he not do! He was insufferably rude to Mr. Macneillie, he hated Ralph because he wanted the Juvenile Lead himself, he treated all the other men as though they were beneath contempt, he persecuted all the ladies of the company with tiresome attentions, and he was always dragging into the conversation the names of titled people of his acquaintance, or dropping coroneted envelopes in a casual way. Somehow he contrived to set us all at sixes and sevens, and there was joy throughout the company when at last something offended him and he suddenly brought his engagement to an end.” Bride laughed heartily as she heard of the stratagem by which the Manager had contrived to bring about this much desired event. “Who would ever think that Mr. Macneillie had so much fun in him as you describe,” she said. “His face is grave almost to sternness.” “Yes, but when it does light up he hardly looks like the same man,” said Evereld. “I don’t think he would ever have stood the wear and tear of his life if it hadn’t been for his strong vein of humour.” And with that she fell to musing on the strange fact which most people discover sooner or later, that it is not the prosperous and happy people who as a rule are blessed with this divine gift of a sense of the humourous, but the people whose lives are clouded with care and anxiety, or those who have to go about the world with an aching heart, or to bear the consequences of another’s sin. To such as these often enough, by some mysterious law of compensation, there comes a power, not only of feeling the pathos of life more acutely, but of perceiving in everything--even in matters connected with their own sorrows--the subtle touches of humour which keep life healthy and pure. She noticed it very much in Dermot O’Ryan, who young as he was had passed through a hard apprenticeship of ill health, misfortune, political imprisonment, and misunderstanding that to one of his temperament was excessively hard to bear. He was the only one of the O’Ryans who had any literary tastes, and now being cut off by his recent illness from active political life he was busy with a Memoir of his father, a well-known man in the Fenian rising of ‘65, who had died from the effects of his subsequent imprisonment.