“What name shall I announce, sir?” said he a second time, as, overwhelmed with confusion, I still stood speechless before him. Till that very moment all thought on the subject had escaped me, and I utterly forgot that I was actually without a designation in the world. In all my shame and misery it had been a kind of consolation to me that the name of my father had never been degraded, and that whatever might have been my portion of worldly hardship, the once-honored appellation had not shared in it. To assume it at this instant was too perilous. Another day, one short night, would again reduce me to the same ignominious station; and I should have thus, by a momentary rashness, compromised the greatest secret of my heart. A third time did he ask the same question; and as I stood uncertain and overwhelmed, a quiet foot was heard ascending the stairs, a handsome, bright-looking man came forward, the door was flung open at his approach, and the servant called out, “Mr. Sheridan.” I followed quickly, and the door closed behind us. Hastily passing from Sheridan, O'Kelly came forward to me and shook me cordially by the hand. Thanking me politely for my punctuality, he welcomed me with all the semblance of old friendship.
“Colonel Conway and Payne you are already acquainted with,” said he; “but your long absence from England excuses you for not knowing my other friends. This is Mr. Sheridan,”—we bowed,—“Mr. Malcomb, Captain Seymour, Sir George Begley,” and so on, with two or three more. He made a rapid tour of the party, holding me by the arm as he went, till he approached a chair where a young and very handsome man sat, laughing immoderately at some story another at his side was whispering to him.
“What the devil am I to call you?” said O'Kelley to me in my ear. “Tell me quickly.”
Before I could stammer out my own sense of confusion, the person seated in the arm-chair called out,—
“By Jove! O'Kelly must hear that. Tell him, Wynd-ham.” But as suddenly stopping, he said, “A friend of yours, O'Kelly?”
“Yes, your Royal Highness, a very old and valued friend, whom I have not seen since our school-days. He has been vagabondizing over the whole earth, fighting side by side with I know not how many of your Royal Highness's enemies; and, having made his fortune, has come back to lose it here amongst us, as the only suitable reparation in his power for all his past misconduct.”
“With such excellent intentions, he could not have fallen into better hands than yours, O'Kelly,” said the Prince, laughing; “and I wish all the fellows we have been subsidizing these ten years no worse than to be your antagonists at piquet.” Then, addressing me, he said, “An Irishman, I presume?”
“Yes, your Royal Highness,” said I, bowing deeply.
“He started as an something, or Mac somebody,” said O'Kelly, interrupting; “but having been Don'd in Spain, 'Strissemoed' in Italy, and almost guillotined in France for calling himself Monsieur, he has come back to us without any designation that he dares to call his own.”
“That is exactly what happened to a very well known character in the reign of Charles I.,” said Conway, “who called himself by the title of his last conquest in the fair sex, saying, 'When I take a reputation, I accept all the reproach of the name.'”