'All right,' said Mr. Rooney, whose double secret of the marriage and the leg of pork seemed almost too much for him to bear.
'I suppose I may tell Phil,' said I in a whisper.
'No one else,' said Paul, as we left the house, and I took O'Grady's arm down the street.
'Well, I have frightened De Vere to some purpose,' said O'Grady. 'He has made a full confession about Burke, who was even a deeper villain than we supposed. What do you think? He has been the spy of the Bonapartist faction all this time, and selling old Guillemain as regularly as the others. To indulge his passion for play, he received the pay of four different parties, whom he pitted against one another exactly as he saw proper. Consummate clever scoundrel!—he had to deal with men whose whole lives are passed in the very practice of every chicanery and deceit, and yet he has jockied them all. What a sad thing to think that such abilities and knowledge of mankind should be prostituted to the lowest and most debasing uses; and that the sole tendency of such talent should be to dishonour and disgrace its possessor! Some of his manufactured despatches were masterpieces of cleverness.'
'Well, where is he now? Still in Paris?'
'No. The moment he had so far forgotten himself as to strike De Vere, he forged a passport and returned to London, carrying with him hosts of papers of the French authorities, which to our Foreign Office will be very acceptable. De Vere meanwhile feels quite at his ease. He was always afraid of his companion, yet can't forgive him his last indignity.
'No! A blow!'
'Not at all; you mistake. His regrets have a different origin. It is for not backing the “rouge” that he is inexorable towards him. Besides, he is under the impression that all these confessions he has been making establish for him a kind of moral insolvency act, by which he is to come forth irresponsible for the past, and quite ready to contract new debts for the future. At this moment his greatest point of doubt consists in whether he should marry your cousin, Lady Julia, or Miss Bellew; for, in his own phrase, “he must do something that way to come round.”'
'Impudent scoundrel!'
'Fact, I assure you; and so easy, so unaffected, so free from embarrassment of any kind is he, that I'm really quite a convert to this modern school of good manners, when associating with even such as Burke conveys no feeling of shame or discomfort. More than could be said some forty years ago, I fancy.'