"How do you do, Mr. Mollett?" said Mr. Prendergast. "I am sorry to see you looking so poorly."
"Yes, sir. I am poorly enough certainly. I have been very ill since I last had the pleasure of seeing you, sir."
"Ah, yes, that was at Castle Richmond; was it not? Well, you have done the best thing that a man can do; you have come home to your wife and family now that you are ill and require their attendance."
Mr. Mollett looked up at him with a countenance full of unutterable woe and weakness. What was he to say on such a subject in such a company? There sat his wife and daughter, his veritable wife and true-born daughter, on whom he was now dependent, and in whose hands he lay, as a sick man does lie in the hands of women: could he deny them? And there sat the awful Mr. Prendergast, the representative of all that Fitzgerald interest which he had so wronged, and who up to this morning had at any rate believed the story with which he, Mollett, had pushed his fortunes in county Cork. Could he in his presence acknowledge that Lady Fitzgerald had never been his wife? It must be confessed that he was in a sore plight. And then remember his ague!
"You feel yourself tolerably comfortable, I suppose, now that you are with your wife and daughter," continued Mr. Prendergast, most inhumanly.
Mr. Mollett continued to look at him so piteously from beneath his nightcap. "I am better than I was, thank you, sir," said he.
"There is nothing like the bosom of one's family for restoring one to health; is there, Mrs. Mollett;—or for keeping one in health?"
"I wish you gentlemen would think so," said she, drily.
"As for me, I never was blessed with a wife. When I am sick I have to trust to hired attendance. In that respect I am not so fortunate as your husband; I am only an old bachelor."
"Oh, ain't you, sir?" said Mrs. Mollett; "and perhaps it's best so. It ain't all married people that are the happiest."