He schooled himself to go through the ordeal with a manly gait and with dry eyes, and he did it; but their eyes were not dry, not even those of the men. Mrs. Jones and a favourite girl whom the young ladies patronized were not of the number, for it had been decided that they should follow the fortunes of their mistress; but Richard was there, standing a little apart from the others, as being now on a different footing. He was to go also, but before the scene was over he also had taken to sobbing violently.
"I wish you all well and happy," said Herbert, making his little speech, "and regret deeply that the intercourse between us should be thus suddenly severed. You have served me and mine well and truly, and it is hard upon you now, that you should be bid to go and seek another home elsewhere."
"It isn't that we mind, Mr. Herbert; it ain't that as frets us," said one of the men.
"It ain't that at all, at all," said Richard, doing chorus; "but that yer honour should be robbed of what is yer honour's own."
"But you all know that we cannot help it," continued Herbert; "a misfortune has come upon us which nobody could have foreseen, and therefore we are obliged to part with our old friends and servants."
At the word friends the maid-servants all sobbed. "And 'deed we is your frinds, and true frinds, too," wailed the cook.
"I know you are, and it grieves me to feel that I shall see you no more. But you must not be led to think by what Richard says that anybody is depriving me of that which ought to be my own. I am now leaving Castle Richmond because it is not my own, but justly belongs to another;—to another who, I must in justice tell you, is in no hurry to claim his inheritance. We none of us have any ground for displeasure against the present owner of this place, my cousin, Sir Owen Fitzgerald."
"We don't know nothing about Sir Owen," said one voice.
"And don't want," said another, convulsed with sobs.
"He's a very good sort of young gentleman—of his own kind, no doubt," said Richard.