The Irish regiments long employed in the Spanish service had
become more or less naturalized in that country, which accounts for the
great number of thoroughly Milesian names still to be found there, some
of them, as O'Donnell, owned by men of high distinction. Among other
officers who had settled with their families in the Peninsula was a
Colonel O'Byrne, who, like most of his countrymen there, died penniless,
leaving his widow with a pension and his daughter without a sixpence. It
can well be imagined that an offer from an English duke was not to be
sneezed at by either Mrs. or Miss O'Byrne; but there were some grave
obstacles to the match. The duke was a Protestant. But what of that?--he
had never been encumbered with religion, nor even with a decent
observance of its institutions, for it is said that, when in England, at
his country seat, he had, to show how little he cared for
respectability, made a point of having the hounds out on a Sunday
morning. He was not going to lose a pretty girl for the sake of a faith
with which he had got disgusted ever since his Huguenot tutor tried to
make him a sober Christian. He had turned coat in politics, and would
now try his weathercock capabilities at religion.
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