Lodge was at his service, and if he would honour him with his company at Castle Rackrent, they could ride over together some morning and look at it before signing the lease.  Accordingly, the captain came over to us, and he and Sir Condy grew the greatest friends ever you see, and were for ever out a-shooting or hunting together, and were very merry in the evenings; and Sir Condy was invited of course to Mount Juliet’s Town; and the family intimacy that had been in Sir Patrick’s time was now recollected, and nothing would serve Sir Condy but he must be three times a week at the least with his new friends, which grieved me, who knew, by the captain’s groom and gentleman, how they talked of him at Mount Juliet’s Town, making him quite, as one may say, a laughing-stock and a butt for the whole company; but they were soon cured of that by an accident that surprised ’em not a little, as it did me.  There was a bit of a scrawl found upon the waiting-maid of old Mr. Moneygawl’s youngest daughter, Miss Isabella, that laid open the whole; and her father, they say, was like one out of his right mind, and swore it was the last thing he ever should have thought of, when he invited my master to his house, that his daughter should think of such a match.  But their talk signified not a straw, for as Miss Isabella’s maid reported, her young mistress was fallen over head and ears in love with Sir Condy from the first time that ever her brother brought him into the house to dinner.  The servant who waited that day behind my master’s chair was the first who knew it, as he says; though it’s hard to believe him, for he did not tell it till a great while afterwards; but, however, it’s likely enough, as the thing turned out, that he was not far out of the way, for towards the middle of dinner, as he says, they were talking of stage-plays, having a playhouse, and being great play-actors at Mount Juliet’s Town; and Miss Isabella turns short to my master, and says: 

‘Have you seen the play-bill, Sir Condy?’

‘No, I have not,’ said he.

‘Then more shame for you,’ said the captain her brother, ’not to know that my sister is to play Juliet to-night, who plays it better than any woman on or off the stage in all Ireland.’

‘I am very happy to hear it,’ said Sir Condy; and there the matter dropped for the present.

But Sir Condy all this time, and a great while afterwards, was at a terrible nonplus; for he had no liking, not he, to stage-plays, nor to Miss Isabella either—­to his mind, as it came out over a bowl of whisky-punch at home, his little Judy M’Quirk, who was daughter to a sister’s son of mine, was worth twenty of Miss Isabella.  He had seen her often when he stopped at her father’s cabin to drink whisky out of the eggshell, out hunting, before he came to the estate, and, as she gave out, was under something like a promise of marriage to her.  Anyhow, I could not but pity my poor master, who was so bothered between them, and he an easy-hearted man, that could