He clasped his hands fervently together as he replied, in a voice tremulous with agitation, 'I have not told you a lie!' He turned away as he spoke, and I lay down in my bed with a mind relieved, but not at rest.
Alas, how hard it is to be happy! The casualties of this world come on like waves, one succeeding the other. We may escape the heavy roll of the mighty ocean, and be wrecked in the still, smooth waters of the landlocked bay. We dread the storm and the hurricane, and we forget how many have perished within sight of shore. But yet a secret fear is ever present with us when danger hovers near; and this sense of some impending evil it was which now darkened me, and whispered me to be prepared.
I lay for some time sunk in my reflections, and when I looked up, the priest was gone. A letter had fallen on the floor, as if by accident» and I rose to place it on my table, when, to my surprise, I found it addressed to myself. It was marked 'On His Majesty's service,' and ran thus:—
'Dublin Castle.
'Sir,—I have received his Excellency's
orders to inform you that unless you, on receipt of the
present letter, at once return to your duty as a member of
the staff, your name will be erased from the list, and the
vacancy immediately filled up.—I have the honour to be,
etc.,
'Henry Horton.'
What could have caused the great alteration in his Excellency's feelings that this order evinced I could not conceive, and I felt hurt and indignant at the tone of a letter which came on me so completely by surprise. I knew, however, how much my father looked to my strict obedience to every call of duty, and resolved that, come what would, I should at once resume my position on the duke's staff.
These were but momentary reflections. My thoughts recurred at once to where my heart was dwelling—-with her whose very image lived within me. Try how I would, I could think of no pleasure in which she took not part, imagine no scheme of life in which she was not concerned. Ambition had lost its charm; the path of glory I had longed to tread, I felt now as nothing beside that heather walk which led me towards her; and if I were to have chosen between the most brilliant career high station, influence, and fortune could bestow, and the lowly condition of a dweller in these wild mountain solitudes, I felt that not a moment of hesitation or doubt would mark my decision. There was a kind of heroism in the relinquishing all the blandishments of fortune, all the seductions of the brilliant world, for one whose peaceful and humble life strayed not beyond the limits of these rugged mountains; and this had its charm. There were times when I loved to ask myself whether Louisa Bellew would not, even amid all the splendour and display of London life, be as much admired and courted as the most acknowledged of beauty's daughters: now I turned rather to the thought of how far happier and better it was to know that a nature so unhackneyed, a heart so rich in its own emotions, was never to be exposed to the callous collision of society and all the hardened hypocrisy of the world. My own lot, too, how many more chances of happiness did it not present as I looked at the few weeks of the past, and thought of whole years thus gliding away, loving and beloved!
A kind of stir, and the sound of voices beneath my window, broke my musings, and I rose and looked out. It proceeded from the young girl and the country lad who formed the priest's household. They were talking together before the door, and pointing in the direction of the highroad, where a cloud of dust had marked the passage of some carriage—an event rare enough to attract attention in these wild districts.
'And did his reverence say that the Captain was to be kept in bed till he came back?'
'Ah, then, sure, he knew well enough,' said Mary, 'that the young man would be up and off to the castle the moment he was able to walk—ay, and maybe before it too. Troth, Patsey, it's what I'm thinking—there's nobody knows how to coort like a raal gentleman.'
'Och, botheration!' said Patsey, with an offended toss of his head, and a look of half malice.