"Perhaps you take too hopeless a view of your case, sir," resumed Lord Netherby, blandly. "I am, unhappily, very ignorant of Irish family rank; but I feel a.s.sured that Mr. Dempsey, of Dempsey's Hole--"

"Grove,--Dempsey's Grove," said Paul, with a look of anger.

"I ask your pardon, humbly,--I would say of Dempsey's Grove,-might be an accepted suitor in the very highest quarters. At all events, from news I have heard this morning it is more than likely that the Knight will be in London before many weeks, and I dare not a.s.sume either the responsibility of favoring your views, or incurring his displeasure by an act of interference. I think her Ladyship coucurs with me."

"Perfectly. The case is really one which, however we may and do feel the liveliest interest in, lies quite beyond our influence or control."

"Mr. Dempsey may rest a.s.sured that, even from so brief an acquaintance, we have learned to appreciate some of his many excellent qualities of head and heart."

Lady Netherby bowed an acquiescence cold and stately; and, his Lordship rising at the same time, Paul saw that the audience drew to a close. He arose then slowly, and with a faint sigh,--for he thought of his long and dreary journey, made to so little profit.

"So I may jog back again as I came," muttered he, as he drew on his gloves. "Well, well, Lady Eleanor knew him better than I did.

Good-morning, my Lady. I hope you are about to enjoy better health.

Good-bye, my Lord."

"Do you make any stay in town, Mr. Dempsey?" inquired his Lordship, in that bland voice that best became him. "Till I pack my portmanteau, my Lord, and pay my bill at the 'Tavistock,'--not an hour longer."

"I 'm sorry for that. I had hoped, and Lady Netherby also expected, we should have the pleasure of seeing you again."

"Very grateful, my Lord; but I see how the land lies as well as if I was here a month."

And with this significant speech Mr. Dempsey repeated his salutations and withdrew.

"What presumption!" exclaimed Lady Netherby, as the door closed behind him. "But how needlessly Lady Eleanor Darcy must have lowered herself to incur such acquaintanceship!"

Lord Netherby made no reply, but gave a glance towards the still open door of the drawing-room. Her Ladyship understood it at once, and said,--

"Oh, let us release poor Richard from his bondage. Tell him to come in."

Lord Netherby walked forward; but scarcely had he entered the drawing-room, when he called out, "He 's gone!"

"Gone! when?--how?" cried Lady Netherby, ringing the bell. "Did you see Lord Wall incourt when he was going, Davenport?" asked she, at once a.s.suming her own calm deportment.

"Yes, my Lady."

"I hope he took the carriage."

"No, my Lady, his Lordship went on foot."

"That will do, Davenport. I don't receive to-day."

"I must hasten after him," said Lord Netherby, as the servant withdrew.

"We have, perhaps, incurred the very hazard we hoped to obviate."

"I half feared it," exclaimed Lady Netherby, gravely. "Lose no time, however, and bring him to dinner; say that I feel very poorly, and that his society will cheer me greatly. If he is unfit to leave the house, stay with him; but above all things let him not be left alone."

Lord Netherby hastened from the room, and his carriage was soon heard at a rapid pace proceeding down the square.

Lady Netherby sat with her eyes fixed on the carpet, and her hands clasped closely, lost in thought. "Yes," said she, half aloud, "there is a fate in it! This Lady Eleanor may have her vengeance yet!"

It was about an hour after this, and while she was still revolving her own deep thoughts, that Lord Netherby re-entered the room.

"Well, is he here?" asked she, impatiently.

"No, he's off to Ireland; the very moment he reached the hotel he ordered four horses to his carriage, and while his servant packed some trunks he himself drove over to Lord Castlereagh's, but came back almost immediately. They must have used immense despatch, for Long told me that they would be nigh Barnet when I called."

"He 's a true Wallincourt," said her Ladyship, bitterly. "Their family motto is 'Rash in danger,' and they have well deserved it."

CHAPTER x.x.xI. A LESSON FOR EAVES-DROPPING.

Forester--for so to the end we must call him--but exemplified the old adage in his haste. The debility of long illness was successfully combated for some hours by the fever of excitement; but as that wore off, symptoms of severe malady again exhibited themselves, and when on the second evening of his journey he arrived at Bangor, he was dangerously ill. With a head throbbing, and a brain almost mad, he threw himself upon a bed, perhaps the thought of his abortive effort to reach Ireland the most agonizing feeling of his tortured mind. His first care was to inquire after the sailing of the packet; and learning that the vessel would leave within an hour, he avowed his resolve to go at every hazard. As the time drew nigh, however, more decided evidences of fever set in, and the medical man who had been called to his aid p.r.o.nounced that his life would pay the penalty were he to persist in his rash resolve. His was not a temper to yield to persuasion on selfish grounds, and nothing short of his actual inability to endure moving from where he lay at last compelled him to cede; even then he ordered his only servant to take the despatches which Lord Castlereagh had given him, and proceed with them to Dublin, where he should seek out Mr. Bicknell, and place them in his hands, with strict injunctions to have them forwarded to Lady Eleanor Darcy at once. The burning anxiety of a mind weakened by a tedious and severe malady, the fever of travelling, and the impatient struggles be made to be clear and explicit in his directions, repeated as they were full twenty times over, all conspired to exaggerate the worst features of his case; and ere the packet sailed, his head was wandering in wild delirium.

Linwood knew his master too well to venture on a contradiction; and although with very grave doubts that he should ever see him again alive, he set out, resolving to spare no exertions to be back soon again in Bangor. The transit of the Channel forty-five years ago was, however, very different from that at present, and it was already the evening of the following day when he reached Dublin.

There was no difficulty in finding out Mr. Bicknell's residence; a very showy bra.s.s-plate on a door in a fashionable street proclaimed the house of the well-known man of law. He was not at home, however, nor would be for some hours; he had gone out on a matter of urgent business, and left orders that except for some most pressing reason, he was not to be sent for. Linwood did not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce his business such, and at length obtained the guidance of a servant to the haunt in question.

It was in a street of a third or fourth-rate rank, called Stafford Street, that Bicknell's servant now stopped, and having made more than one inquiry as to name and number, at last knocked at the door of a sombre-looking, ruinous old house, whose windows, broken or patched with paper, bespoke an air of poverty and dest.i.tution. A child in a ragged and neglected dress opened the door, and answering to the question "If Mr. Bicknell were there," in the affirmative, led Linwood up stairs creaking as they went with rottenness and decay.

"You 're to rap there, and he 'll come to you," said the child, as they reached the landing, where two doors presented themselves; and so saying, she slipped noiselessly and stealthily down the stairs, leaving him alone in the gloomy lobby. Linwood was not without astonishment at the place in which he found himself; but there was no time for the indulgence of such a feeling, and he knocked, at first gently, and then, as no answer came, more loudly, and at last when several minutes elapsed, without any summons to enter, he tapped sharply at the panel with his cane. Still there was no reply; the deep silence of the old house seemed like that of a church at midnight; not a sound was heard to break it. There was a sense of dreariness and gloom over the ruinous spot and the fast-closing twilight that struck Linwood deeply; and it is probable, had the mission with which he was intrusted been one of less moment than his master seemed to think it, that Linwood would quietly have descended the stairs, and deferred his interview with Mr. Bicknell to a more suitable time and place. He had come, however, bent on fulfilling his charge; and so, after waiting what he believed to be half an hour, and which might possibly have been five or ten minutes, he applied his hand to the lock, and entered the room.

It was a large, low-ceilinged apartment, whose moth-eaten furniture seemed to rival with the building itself, and which, though once not without some pretension to respectability, was now crumbling to decay, or coa.r.s.ely mended by some rude hand. A door, not quite shut, led into an inner apartment; and from this room the sound of voices proceeded, whose conversation in all probability had prevented Linwood's summons from being heard.

Whether the secret instincts of his calling were the prompter,--for Linwood was a valet,--or that the strange circ.u.mstances in which he found himself had suggested a spirit of curiosity, but Linwood approached the door and peeped in. The sin of eaves-dropping, like most other sins, would seem only difficult at the first step; the subsequent ones came easily, for, as the listener established himself in a position to hear what went forward, he speedily became interested in what he heard.

By the gray half-light three figures were seen. One was a lady; so at least her position and att.i.tude bespoke her, although her shawl was of a coa.r.s.e and humble stuff, and her straw bonnet showed signs of time and season. She sat back in a deep leather chair, with hands folded, and her head slightly thrown forward, as if intently listening to the person who at a distance of half the room addressed lier. He was a thick-set, powerful man, in a jockey-cut coat and top-boots; a white hat, somewhat crushed and travel-stained, was at his feet, and across it a heavy horsewhip; his collar was confined by a single fold of a spotted handkerchief that thus displayed a brawny throat and a deep beard of curly black hair that made the head appear unnaturally large. The third figure was of a little, dapper, smart-looking personage, with a neatly powdered head and a scrupulously white cravat, who, standing partly behind the lady's chair, bestowed an equal attention on the speaker.

The green-coated man, it was clear to see, was of an order in life far inferior to the others, and in the manner of his address, his att.i.tude as he sat, and his whole bearing, exhibited a species of rude deference to the listeners.

"Well, Jack," cried the little man, in a sharp lively voice, "we knew all these facts before; what we were desirous of was something like proof,--something that might be brought out into open court and before a jury."

"I'm afraid then, sir," replied the other, "I can't help you there. I told Mr. Daly all I knew and all I suspected, when I was up in Newgate; and if he had n't been in such a hurry that night to leave Dublin for the north, I could have brought him to the very house this fellow Garret was living in."

"Who is Garret?" broke in the lady, in a deep, full voice.

"The late Mr. Gleeson's butler, ma'am," said the little man; "a person we have never been able to come at. To summon him as a witness would avail us nothing; it is his private testimony that might be of such use to us."

"Well, you see, sir," continued the green coat, or, as he was familiarly named by the other, Jack, whom, perhaps, our reader has already recognized as Freney, the others being Miss Daly and Bicknell,-"well, you see, sir, Mr. Daly was angry at the way things was done that night,--and sure enough he had good cause,-and sorra bit of a word he 'd speak to me when I was standing with the tears in my eyes to thank him; no, nor he wouldn't take the mare that was ready saddled and bridled in Healey's stables waiting for him, but he turned on his heel with 'D----n you for a common highwayman; it's what a man of blood and birth ever gets by stretching a hand to save you.'"

"He should have thought of that before," remarked Miss Daly, solemnly.

"Faith, and if he did, ma'am, your humble servant would have had to dance upon nothing!" rejoined Freney, with a laugh that was very far from mirthful.

"And what was the circ.u.mstance which gave Mr. Daly so much displeasure, Jack?" asked Bicknell. "I thought that everything went on exactly as he had planned it."

"Quite the contrary, sir; nothing was the way it ought to be. The fire was never thought of--"