"And now, my dear Miss Mary," said he, as they entered the drawing-room,--"now that I have light to look at you, let me make my compliments on your appearance. Handsomer than ever, I positively declare. They told me in the town that you half killed yourself with fatigue; that you frequently were days long on horseback, and nights watching by sick-beds; but if this be the result, benevolence is indeed its own reward."

"Ah, my dear Mr. Repton, I see you do not keep all your flatteries for the jury-box."

"My moments are too limited here to allow me time for an untruth. I must be off; to-night I have a special retainer for a great record at Roscommon, and at this very instant I should be poring over deeds and parchments, instead of gazing at 'orbs divinely blue;' not but, I believe, now that I look closer, yours are hazel."

"Let me order dinner, then, at once," said she, approaching the bell.

"I have done that already, my dear," said he, gayly; "and what is more, I have dictated the bill of fare. I guessed what a young lady's simple meal might be, and I have been down to the cook, and you shall see the result."

"Then it only remains for me to think of the cellar. What shall it be, sir? The Burgundy that you praised so highly last winter, or the Port that my uncle preferred to it?"

"I declare that I half suspect your uncle was right. Let us move for a new trial, and try both over again," said he, laughing, as she left the room.

"Just to think of such a girl in such a spot," cried he to himself, as he walked alone, up and down the room; "beauty, grace, fascination,--all that can charm and attract; and then, such a nature, childlike in gayety, and chivalrous,--ay, chivalrous as a chevalier!"

"I see, sir, you are rehearsing for Roscommon," said Mary, who entered the room while he was yet declaiming alone; "but I must interrupt you, for the soup is waiting."

"I obey the summons," said he tendering his arm. And they both entered the dinner-room.

So long as the meal lasted, Repton's conversation was entirely devoted to such topics as he might have discussed at a formal dinner-party. He talked of the world of society, its deaths, births, and marriages; its changes of place and amus.e.m.e.nt. He narrated the latest smart things that were going the round of the clubs, and hinted at the political events that were pa.s.sing. But the servants gone, and the chairs drawn closer to the blazing hearth, his tone changed at once, and in a voice of tremulous kindness he said,--"I can't bear to think of the solitude of this life of yours!--nay, hear me out. I say this, not for _you_, since in the high devotion of a n.o.ble purpose you are above all its penalties; but I cannot endure to think that _we_ should permit it."

"First of all," said Mary, rapidly, "what you deem solitude is scarcely such; each day is so filled with its duties, that when I come back here of an evening, it often happens that my greatest enjoyment is the very sense of isolation that awaits me. Do you know," added she, "that very often the letter-bag lies unopened by me till morning? And as to newspapers, there they lie in heaps, their covers unbroken to this hour.

Such is actually the case to-day. I haven't read my letters yet."

"I read mine in my bed," cried Repton. "I have them brought to me by candlelight in winter, and I reflect over all the answers while I am dressing. Some of the sharpest things I have ever said have occurred to me while I was shaving; not," added he, hastily, "but one's really best things are always impromptu. Just as I said t' other day to the Viceroy,--a somewhat felicitous one. He was wishing that some historian would choose for his subject the lives of Irish Lord-Lieutenants; not, he remarked, in a mere spirit of party, or with the levity of partisanship, but in a spirit becoming the dignity of history,--such as Hume himself might have done. 'Yes, my Lord,' I replied, 'your observation is most just; it should be a continuation of Rapine.' Eh! it was a home-thrust, wasn't it?--'a continuation of Rapine.'" And the old man laughed till his eyes ran over.

"Do these great folk ever thoroughly forgive such things?" asked Mary.

"My dear child, their self-esteem is so powerful they never feel them; and even when they do, the chances are that they store them up in their memories, to retail afterwards as their own. I have detected my own stolen property more than once; but always so damaged by wear, and disfigured by ill-usage, that I never thought of reclaiming it."

"The affluent need never fret for a little robbery," said Mary, smiling.

"Ay, but they may like to be the dispensers of their own riches,"

rejoined Repton, who never was happier than when able to carry out another's ill.u.s.tration.

"Is Lord Reckington agreeable?" asked Mary, trying to lead him on to any other theme than that of herself.

"He is eminently so. Like all men of his cla.s.s, he makes more of a small stock in trade than we with our heads full can ever pretend to. Such men talk well, for they think fluently. Their tact teaches them the popular tone on every subject, and they have the good sense never to rise above it."

"And Ma.s.singbred, the secretary, what of him?"

"A very well-bred gentleman, strongly cased in the triple armor of official dulness. Such men converse as stupid whist-players play cards; they are always asking to 'let them see the last trick;' and the consequence is they are ever half an hour behind the rest of the world.

Ay, Miss Mary, and this is an age where one must never be half a second in arrear. This is really delicious Port; and now that the Burgundy is finished, I think I prefer it. Tell Martin I said so when you write to him. I hope the cellar is well stocked with it."

"It was so when my uncle went away, but I fear I have made great inroads upon it. It was my chief remedy with the poor."

"With the poor! such wine as this,--the richest grape that ever purpled over the Douro! Do you tell me that you gave this to these--Heaven forgive me, what am I saying? Of course you gave it; you gave them what was fifty times more precious,--the kind ministerings of your own angelic nature, the soft words and soft looks and smiles that a prince might have knelt for. I 'm not worthy to drink another gla.s.s of it,"

added he, as he pushed the decanter from him towards the centre of the table.

"But you shall, though," said Mary, filling his gla.s.s, "and it shall be a b.u.mper to my health."

"A toast I'd stake my life for," said he, reverently, as he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it with all the deference of a courtier.

"And now," added he, refilling his gla.s.s, "I drink this to the worthy fellow whose portrait is before me; and may he soon come back again."

He arose as he spoke, and giving his hand to Mary, led her into the drawing-room. "Ay, my dear Miss Mary," said he, following up the theme in his own thoughts, "it is here your uncle ought to be. When the army is in rout and dismay, the general's presence is the talisman that restores discipline. Everything around us at this moment is full of threatening danger. The catalogue of the a.s.sizes is a dark record; I never saw its equal, no more have I ever witnessed anything to compare with the dogged indifference of the men arraigned. The Irishman is half a fatalist by nature; it will be an evil hour that makes him wholly one!"

"But still," said Mary, "you 'd scarcely counsel his return here at this time. The changes that have taken place would fret him deeply, not to speak of even worse!"

She delivered the last few words in a voice broken and trembling; and Repton, turning quickly towards her, said,--"I know what you point at: the irritated feeling of the people, and that insolent menace they dared to affix to his own door."

"You heard of that, then?" cried she, eagerly.

"To be sure, I heard of it; and I heard how your own hands tore it down, and riding with it into the midst of them at Kiltimmon market, you said, 'I 'll give five hundred pounds to him who shows me who did this, and I 'll forfeit five hundred more if I do not horsewhip the coward from the county.'"

Mary hid her face within her hands; but closely as she pressed them there, the warm tears would force their way through, and fall, dropping on her bosom.

"You are a n.o.ble girl," cried he, in ecstasy; "and in all your great trials there is nothing finer than this, that the work of your benevolence has never been stayed by the sense of ill-requital, and you have never involved the character of a people in the foul crime of a miscreant."

"How could I so wrong them, sir?" broke she out. "Who better than myself can speak of their glorious courage, their patient resignation, their n.o.ble self-devotion? Has not the man, sinking under fever, crawled from his bed to lead me to the house of another deeper in misery than himself? Have I not seen the very poorest sharing the little alms bestowed upon their wretchedness? Have I not heard the most touching words of grat.i.tude from lips growing cold in death? You may easily show me lands of greater comfort, where the blessings of wealth and civilization are more widely spread; but I defy you to point to any where the trials of a whole people have been so great and so splendidly sustained."

"I'll not ask the privilege of reply," said Repton; "perhaps I 'd rather be convinced by you than attempt to gainsay one word of your argument."

"At your peril, sir," said she, menacing him with her finger, while a bright smile lit up her features.

"The chaise is at the door, sir," said a servant, entering and addressing Repton.

"Already!" exclaimed he. "Why, my dear Miss Mary, it can't surely be eight o'clock. No; but," added he, looking at his watch, "it only wants a quarter of ten, and I have not said one half of what I had to say, nor heard a fourth of what you had to tell me."

"Let the postboy put up his horses, William," said Miss Martin, "and bring tea."

"A most excellent suggestion," chimed in Repton. "Do you know, my dear, that we old bachelors never thoroughly appreciate all that we have missed in domesticity till we approach a tea-table. We surround ourselves with fifty mockeries of home-life; we can manage soft carpets, warm curtains, snug dinners, but somehow our cup of tea is a rude imitation that only depicts the inaccuracy of the copy. Without the priestess the tea-urn sings forth no incantation."

"How came it that Mr. Repton remained a Benedict?" asked she, gayly.

"By the old accident, that he would n't take what he might have, and could n't get what he wished. Add to that," continued he, after a pause, "when a man comes to a certain time of life without marrying, the world has given to him a certain place, a.s.signed to him, as it were, a certain part which would be utterly marred by a wife. The familiarity of one's female acquaintance--the pleasantest spot in old bachelorhood--could n't stand such an ordeal; and the hundred-and-one eccentricities pardonable and pardoned in the single man would be condemned in the married one.

You shake your head. Well, now, I 'll put it to the test. Would you, or could you, make me your confidant so unreservedly if there were such a person as Mrs. Repton in the world? Not a bit of it, my dear child. We old bachelors are the lay priests of society, and many come to us with confessions they 'd scruple about making to the regular authorities."

"Perhaps you are right," said she, thoughtfully; "at all events, _I_ should have no objection to you as my confessor."

"I may have to claim that promise one of these day yet," said he, significantly. "Eh, here comes William again. Well, the postboy won't wait, or something has gone wrong. Eh, William, what is it?"

"The boy's afraid, sir, if you don't go soon, that there will be no pa.s.sing the river at Barnagheela,--the flood is rising every minute."

"And already the water is too deep," cried Mary. "Give the lad his supper, William. Let him make up his cattle, and say that Mr. Repton remains here for the night."

"And Mr. Repton obeys," said he, bowing; "though what is to become of 'Kelly _versus_ Lenaham and another,' is more than I can say."

"They 'll have so many great guns, sir," said Mary, laughing; "won't they be able to spare a twenty-four pounder?"