"Yes, mother; I have been walking."

"And you are wet!"

"I am nearly dry now. I was wet. But, mother, I am tired and f.a.gged.

It would do me good if I could get a gla.s.s of wine."

She rang the bell, and gave her orders calmly--though every servant in the house now knew the whole truth,--and then lit a candle herself, and looked at him. "My child, what have you done to yourself? Oh, Herbert, you will be ill!" And then, with his arm round her waist, she took him up to her own room, and sat by him while he took off his muddy boots and clammy socks, and made him hot drinks, and tended him as she had done when he was a child. And yet she had that day heard of her great ruin! With truth, indeed, had Mr.

Prendergast said that she was made of more enduring material than Sir Thomas.

And she endeavoured to persuade him to go to his bed; but in this he would not listen to her. He must, he said, see his father that night.

"You have been with him, mother, since--since--."

"Oh, yes; directly after Mr. Prendergast left me."

"Well?"

"He cried like a child, Herbert. We both sobbed together like two children. It was very piteous. But I think I left him better than he has been. He knows now that those men cannot come again to hara.s.s him."

Herbert gnashed his teeth, and clenched his fist as he thought of them; but he could not speak of them, or mention their name before his mother. What must her thoughts be, as she remembered that elder man and looked back to her early childhood!

"He is very weak," she went on to say: "almost helplessly weak now, and does not seem to think of leaving his bed. I have begged him to let me send to Dublin for Sir Henry; but he says that nothing ails him."

"And who is with him now, mother?"

"The girls are both there."

"And Mr. Prendergast?"

Lady Fitzgerald then explained to him, that Mr. Prendergast had returned to Dublin that afternoon, starting twenty-four hours earlier than he intended,--or, at any rate, than he had said that he intended. Having done his work there, he had felt that he would now only be in the way. And, moreover, though his work was done at Castle Richmond, other work in the same matter had still to be done in England. Mr. Prendergast had very little doubt as to the truth of Mollett's story;--indeed we may say he had no doubt; otherwise he would hardly have made it known to all that world round Castle Richmond. But nevertheless it behoved him thoroughly to sift the matter. He felt tolerably sure that he should find Mollett in London; and whether he did or no, he should be able to identify, or not to identify, that scoundrel with the Mr. Talbot who had hired Chevy Chase Lodge, in Dorsetshire, and who had undoubtedly married poor Mary Wainwright.

"He left a kind message for you," said Lady Fitzgerald.--My readers must excuse me if I still call her Lady Fitzgerald, for I cannot bring my pen to the use of any other name. And it was so also with the dependents and neighbours of Castle Richmond, when the time came that the poor lady felt that she was bound publicly to drop her t.i.tle. It was not in her power to drop it; no effort that she could make would induce those around her to call her by another name.

"He bade me say," she continued, "that if your future course of life should take you to London, you are to go to him, and look to him as another father. He has no child of his own," he said, "and you shall be to him as a son."

"I will be no one's son but yours,--yours and my father's," he said, again embracing her.

And then, when, under his mother's eye, he had eaten and drank and made himself warm, he did go to his father and found both his sisters sitting there. They came and cl.u.s.tered round him, taking hold of his hands and looking up into his face, loving him, and pitying him, and caressing him with their eyes; but standing there by their father's bed, they said little or nothing. Nor did Sir Thomas say much;--except this, indeed, that, just as Herbert was leaving him, he declared with a faint voice, that henceforth his son should be master of that house, and the disposer of that property--"As long as I live!" he exclaimed with his weak voice; "as long as I live!"

"No, father; not so."

"Yes, yes! as long as I live. It will be little that you will have, even so--very little. But so it shall be as long as I live."

Very little indeed, poor man, for, alas! his days were numbered.

And then, when Herbert left the room, Emmeline followed him. She had ever been his dearest sister, and now she longed to be with him that she might tell him how she loved him, and comfort him with her tears.

And Clara too--Clara whom she had welcomed as a sister!--she must learn now how Clara would behave, for she had already made herself sure that her brother had been at Desmond Court, the herald of his own ruin.

"May I come with you, Herbert?" she asked, closing in round him and getting under his arm. How could he refuse her? So they went together and sat over a fire in a small room that was sacred to her and her sister, and there, with many sobs on her part and much would-be brave contempt of poverty on his, they talked over the altered world as it now showed itself before them.

"And you did not see her?" she asked, when with many efforts she had brought the subject round to Clara Desmond and her brother's walk to Desmond Court.

"No; she left the room at my own bidding. I could not have told it myself to her."

"And you cannot know then what she would say?"

"No, I cannot know what she would say; but I know now what I must say myself. All that is over, Emmeline. I cannot ask her to marry a beggar."

"Ask her; no! there will be no need of asking her; she has already given you her promise. You do not think that she will desert you? you do not wish it?"

Herein were contained two distinct questions, the latter of which Herbert did not care to answer. "I shall not call it desertion," he said; "indeed the proposal will come from me. I shall write to her, telling her that she need think about me no longer. Only that I am so weary I would do it now."

"And how will she answer you? If she is the Clara that I take her for she will throw your proposal back into your face. She will tell you that it is not in your power to reject her now. She will swear to you, that let your words be what they may, she will think of you--more now than she has ever thought in better days. She will tell you of her love in words that she could not use before. I know she will. I know that she is good, and true, and honest, and generous.

Oh, I should die if I thought she were false! But, Herbert, I am sure that she is true. You can write your letter, and we shall see."

Herbert, with wise arguments learned from his mother, reasoned with his sister, explaining to her that Clara was now by no means bound to cling to him; but as he spoke them his arm fastened itself closely round his sister's waist, for the words which she uttered with so much energy were comfortable to him.

And then, seated there, before he moved from the room, he made her bring him pens, ink, and paper, and he wrote his letter to Clara Desmond. She would fain have stayed with him while he did so, sitting at his feet, and looking into his face, and trying to encourage his hope as to what Clara's answer might be; but this he would not allow; so she went again to her father's room, having succeeded in obtaining a promise that Clara's answer should be shown to her. And the letter, when it was written, copied, and recopied, ran as follows:--

Castle Richmond, ---- night.

My dearest Clara,--

It was with great difficulty that he could satisfy himself with that, or indeed with any other mode of commencement. In the short little love-notes which had hitherto gone from him, sent from house to house, he had written to her with appellations of endearment of his own--as all lovers do; and as all lovers seem to think that no lovers have done before themselves--with appellations which are so sweet to those who write, and so musical to those who read, but which sound so ludicrous when barbarously made public in hideous law courts by brazen-browed lawyers with mercenary tongues. In this way only had he written, and each of these sweet silly songs of love had been as full of honey as words could make it. But he had never yet written to her, on a full sheet of paper, a sensible positive letter containing thoughts and facts, as men do write to women and women also to men, when the lollypops and candied sugar-drops of early love have pa.s.sed away. Now he was to write his first serious letter to her,--and probably his last,--and it was with difficulty that he could get himself over the first three words; but there they were decided on at last.

My dearest Clara,

Before you get this your mother will have told you all that which I could not bring myself to speak out yesterday, as long as you were in the room. I am sure you will understand now why I begged you to go away, and will not think the worse of me for doing so. You now know the whole truth, and I am sure that you will feel for us all here.

Having thought a good deal upon the matter, chiefly during my walk home from Desmond Court, and indeed since I have been at home, I have come to the resolution that everything between us must be over. It would be unmanly in me to wish to ruin you because I myself am ruined. Our engagement was, of course, made on the presumption that I should inherit my father's estate; as it is I shall not do so, and therefore I beg that you will regard that engagement as at an end. Of my own love for you I will say nothing. But I know that you have loved me truly, and that all this, therefore, will cause you great grief. It is better, however, that it should be so, than that I should seek to hold you to a promise which was made under such different circ.u.mstances.

You will, of course, show this letter to your mother. She, at any rate, will approve of what I am now doing; and so will you when you allow yourself to consider it calmly.

We have not known each other so long that there is much for us to give back to each other. If you do not think it wrong I should like still to keep that lock of your hair, to remind me of my first love--and, as I think, my only one. And you, I hope, will not be afraid to have near you the one little present that I made you.

And now, dearest Clara, good-bye. Let us always think, each of the other, as of a very dear friend. May G.o.d bless you, and preserve you, and make you happy.

Yours, with sincere affection,

HERBERT FITZGERALD.

This, when at last he had succeeded in writing it, he read over and over again; but on each occasion he said to himself that it was cold and pa.s.sionless, stilted and unmeaning. It by no means pleased him, and seemed as though it could bring but one answer--a cold acquiescence in the proposal which he so coldly made. But yet he knew not how to improve it. And after all it was a true exposition of that which he had determined to say. All the world--her world and his world--would think it better that they should part; and let the struggle cost him what it would, he would teach himself to wish that it might be so--if not for his own sake, then for hers. So he fastened the letter, and taking it with him determined to send it over, so that it should reach Clara quite early on the following morning.

And then having once more visited his father, and once more kissed his mother, he betook himself to bed. It had been with him one of those days which seem to pa.s.s away without reference to usual hours and periods. It had been long dark, and he seemed to have been hanging about the house, doing nothing and aiding n.o.body, till he was weary of himself. So he went off to bed, almost wondering, as he bethought himself of what had happened to him within the last two days, that he was able to bear the burden of his life so easily as he did. He betook himself to bed; and with the letter close at his hand, so that he might despatch it when he awoke, he was soon asleep. After all, that walk, terrible as it had been, was in the end serviceable to him.