He had been an Earl, with a large income, for thirty years; and in that time he had learned to look collected, even when his ideas were confused'. He is Lord Cashel, guardian of Fanny Wyndham, one of the two strongly contrasted heroines in The Kellys and the O'Kellys; In his second novel, once again Trollope had made an Irish setting central to his plot. Ignored at the time of publication, and difficult to obtain in print for many years, this is a more assured and polished piece of work than The Macdermots of Ballycloran.