"You mean you are anxious to obtain her forgiveness," says Brian, with the kindly intention of a.s.sisting the old man's wandering imagination.

"Eh?" says the squire, sharply. "What d'ye mean, Brian? Speak, lad, when I desire you."

"Look here, George! if you excite yourself like this, you know what the consequences will be," says Brian, sharply, in his turn. "I only meant that, as you--er--jilted their stepsister, I suppose you are anxious to obtain their pardon, now you feel yourself pretty low. But I'd advise you to wait and see about that when you have recovered your strength a little."

"And you believed that old story too!" says the poor squire, forlornly.

"I didn't jilt her at all, Brian. _It was she jilted me!_"

"_What!_" says Brian, turning to see if the bullet had touched his brain instead of his ribs.

"'Tis true. I tell you, that girl broke my heart. She was the prettiest creature I ever saw, with soft dove's eyes, and a heavenly smile, and no more heart than _that_," striking the post of the old-fashioned bedstead with his uninjured arm. "I gave myself up to her, I worshipped the very ground she walked on, and within a fortnight of our wedding she calmly wrote to tell me she could not marry me!"

"Giving a reason?"

"No. Even _she_, I presume, could not summon sufficient courage to tell the wretch she had deluded of her love for another. She gave me no reason. She entreated me, however, to keep silence about the real author of the breach between us,--that is, herself. _I_ was the one to break off our engagement! I was to bear all the blame! She implored me to conceal her share in it, and finally demanded of me, as a last favor, that I would give the world to understand I had thrown _her_ over."

"A charmingly disinterested specimen of womankind," says Brian, raising his brows.

"And this to _me_," says The Desmond, an indignant sob making his weak voice weaker,--"a man who had always kept himself straight in the eyes of the world. I was required to represent myself as a low, despicable fellow, one of those who seek a woman's affections only to ignore them at the sight of the next pretty face."

"But you refused to comply with her request?" says Brian, hastily.

"No, sir, I didn't," says the squire, shame struggling with his excitement. "On the contrary, I gave in to her in every respect. I believe at that time I would cheerfully have allowed myself to be branded as a _thief_ if she had desired it and if it would have saved her one sc.r.a.p of discomfort. She was afraid of her sisters, you see. I blamed them then, Brian, but I think now her fear of them arose from the fact that _they_ were as true as _she_ was----Well, well!"

"This is indeed a revelation," says Brian.

"Yes; you wouldn't think they would behave like that, would you?" says Mr. Desmond, eagerly.

"Who? The Misses Blake?" says Brian, startled.

"Yes. It wasn't like them to keep silent all these years, and let me bear the brunt of the battle, when they knew I was innocent and that it was their own flesh and blood who was in fault. Yet they turned their backs upon me, and have treated me ever since as though I were in reality the miscreant they have succeeded in making me out."

"There is a terrible mistake somewhere," says Brian. "They do verily believe you to be the miscreant you describe."

"Brian, come here!" says the old man, in an ominously calm tone. "Do you mean to tell me Priscilla Blake believes me guilty of having behaved dishonestly to her sister Katherine? You positively think this?"

"I _know_ it," says Brian, who feels it is better to get out the plain unvarnished truth at once.

"You have no doubt? Think, Brian; think."

"I needn't.--There is no doubt on my mind."

"Then she deceived us _all_," says the squire, in a stricken tone. Then he roused himself again. He seems to have recovered his strength wonderfully during the past hour. "Go, get me Priscilla Blake," he says.

"Hurry, boy! hurry! I must make it right with her before I die."

"Before you recover, you mean," says Brian, cheerily. "There! lie down now, and keep yourself quiet, or you won't be looking your best when she comes."

And now Miss Priscilla has come, and is standing beside the bed of her quondam friend, looking down upon him with dim eyes.

"I am sorry to meet you again like this, George Desmond," she says, at last, in tones meant to be full of relentless displeasure, but which falter strangely.

"She made as great a fool of _you_ as of _me_, Priscilla," is the squire's answer, whose tired mind can only grasp one thought,--the treachery of the woman he had loved! And then it all comes out, and the letter the false Katherine had written him is brought out from a little secret drawer, bound round with the orthodox blue ribbon, and smelling sadly of dust, as though to remind one of all things, of warmest sweetest love, of truest trust, and indeed of that fair but worthless body from whose hand it came, now lying mouldering and forgotten in a foreign land.

"Oh, I wouldn't have believed it of her!" says Miss Priscilla, weeping bitterly. "But there must have been something wrong with her always, though we could never see it. What an angel face she had! But the children, they speak terribly of her, and they say--that she--and James Beresford--did not get on at all."

"Eh?" says the squire. He rises himself on his sound elbow, and quite a glow of color rushes into his pallid cheeks. When, with a groan of self-contempt, he sinks back again, and the light in his eye (was it of satisfaction?) dies.

"You have met Brian," he says presently. "What do you think of him, Priscilla? He is a good lad,--a _very_ good lad."

"He looks it," says Miss Priscilla, shortly.

"He does," heartily. "Well, I'm told this boy of mine is in love with your girl."

"Who told you?" says Miss Priscilla.

"Brian himself," says the Squire.

"I like that in him," says Miss Priscilla. "Well, George, if you will look upon that as settled, so shall I."

"So be it," says the squire--"Eh, my dear? but doesn't it make us feel old to be discussing the love-affairs of these young things, when it seems only yesterday that we--that you and I, Priscilla----"

"That is all buried long ago: don't rake it up. It died when first your eyes fell on _her_," says Miss Blake, hurriedly.

"I was a fool," says the squire. "But, somehow, since I have been talking to you, I don't think I'm going to die this time, and old scenes came back to me, and--I suppose it is too late now, Priscilla?"

There is no mistaking his meaning.

"Oh, yes; a whole lifetime too late," says Miss Priscilla, with a soft, faint blush that would not have misbecome a maiden in her teens. "But I am glad we are friends again, George."

She pressed his hand with real affection, and then colors again warmly, as though afraid of having discovered herself in the act of committing an indiscretion. Could that gentle pressure be called forward, or light, or unseemly? Terrible thought!

"So am I, my dear," says the squire. And then again, "You won't think of it, then, Priscilla?"

"No, no," says Miss Blake, feeling flattered at his persistence, and then she actually laughs out loud, and The Desmond laughs too, though feebly; and then the doctor comes in again, and Miss Priscilla goes home, to tell Miss Penelope, in the secrecy of her chamber, and with the solemnity that befits the occasion, all about the squire's proposal, its reception, and its rejection.

Be a.s.sured no minutest detail is forgotten; Miss Penelope is soon in possession of every smallest look and word connected with it, and deeply gratifying is the manner in which the great news is received by that gentle maiden.

"Though late in the day, Penelope," says Miss Priscilla, as a sort of wind-up to her recital, "it was an offer of marriage _any_ woman might be proud of, be she young or old; and he _meant_ it, too. He was quite _pressing_. Twice he asked me, although my first was a most decided 'No.'"

"It seems terrible, your having been so cold to him, poor fellow!" says Miss Penelope, with a regretful sigh for the griefs of the rejected Desmond.

"What could I do?" says Miss Priscilla, with an air of self-defence.

This thought, that she can actually be accused of having treated the sterner s.e.x in a hardhearted fashion, is cakes and ale to her.

"We must not talk of this, Penelope," she says, presently. "It would be unfair. It must never transpire through _us_ that George Desmond laid his heart and fortune at my feet only to be rejected."

To her these old-world phrases sound grand and musical and full of fire and sentiment.