Lord Kilgobbin | Page 6

I care precious little which of the
three.
'I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages the revenue to
come forward and show a surplus. Chancellors of the Exchequer make
great reputations in that fashion; but there are certain economies that lie
close to revolutions; now don't risk this, nor don't be above taking a
hint from one some years older than you, though he neither rules his

father's house nor metes out his pocket-money.'
Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from time to time,
and though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their
injustice gave her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought
over them in a spirit of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none
of these letters to her father. He, indeed, only asked if Dick were well,
or if he were soon going up for that scholarship or fellowship--he did
not know which, nor was he to blame--'which, after all, it was hard on a
Kearney to stoop to accept, only that times were changed with us! and
we weren't what we used to be'--a reflection so overwhelming that he
generally felt unable to dwell on it.
CHAPTER II
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI
Mathew Kearney had once a sister whom he dearly loved, and whose
sad fate lay very heavily on his heart, for he was not without
self-accusings on the score of it. Matilda Kearney had been a belle of
the Irish Court and a toast at the club when Mathew was a young fellow
in town; and he had been very proud of her beauty, and tasted a full
share of those attentions which often fall to the lot of brothers of
handsome girls.
Then Matty was an heiress, that is, she had twelve thousand pounds in
her own right; and Ireland was not such a California as to make a very
pretty girl with twelve thousand pounds an everyday chance. She had
numerous offers of marriage, and with the usual luck in such cases,
there were commonplace unattractive men with good means, and there
were clever and agreeable fellows without a sixpence, all alike
ineligible. Matty had that infusion of romance in her nature that few, if
any, Irish girls are free from, and which made her desire that the man of
her choice should be something out of the common. She would have
liked a soldier who had won distinction in the field. The idea of
military fame was very dear to her Irish heart, and she fancied with
what pride she would hang upon the arm of one whose gay trappings

and gold embroidery emblematised the career he followed. If not a
soldier, she would have liked a great orator, some leader in debate that
men would rush down to hear, and whose glowing words would be
gathered up and repeated as though inspirations; after that a poet, and
perhaps--not a painter--a sculptor, she thought, might do.
With such aspirations as these, it is not surprising that she rejected the
offers of those comfortable fellows in Meath, or Louth, whose military
glories were militia drills, and whose eloquence was confined to the
bench of magistrates.
At three-and-twenty she was in the full blaze of her beauty; at
three-and-thirty she was still unmarried, her looks on the wane, but her
romance stronger than ever, not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness
towards that sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to
woo and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of all that
could minister to imagination, partly in anger with her brother who had
been urging her to a match she disliked, she went abroad to travel,
wandered about for a year or two, and at last found herself one winter
at Naples.
There was at that time, as secretary to the Greek legation, a young
fellow whom repute called the handsomest man in Europe; he was a
certain Spiridion Kostalergi, whose title was Prince of Delos, though
whether there was such a principality, or that he was its representative,
society was not fully agreed upon. At all events, Miss Kearney met him
at a Court ball, when he wore his national costume, looking, it must be
owned, so splendidly handsome that all thought of his princely rank
was forgotten in presence of a face and figure that recalled the highest
triumphs of ancient art. It was Antinous come to life in an embroidered
cap and a gold-worked jacket, and it was Antinous with a voice like
Mario, and who waltzed to perfection. This splendid creature, a modern
Alcibiades in gifts of mind and graces, soon heard, amongst his other
triumphs, how a rich and handsome Irish girl had fallen in love with
him at first sight. He