“‘Whisht,’ said Billy, ‘and keep the secret. I’m earning the rent for your honour. One must do many a queer thing that pays two pound ten an acre for bad land.’
“This was enough: the Knight wished Billy every success, and left him amid the vociferous applause of a well satisfied audience. This adventure, it seems, has made the worthy Knight a great friend to the introduction of poor laws; for, he remarks very truly, ‘more of Billy’s countrymen might take a fancy to a savage life, if the secret was found out.’”
It was impossible for me to preserve my incognito, as Mr. O’Leary concluded his story, and I was obliged to join in the mirth of Trevanion, who laughed loud and long as he finished it.
CHAPTER XL.
A REMINISCENCE.
Harry Proves Himself a Man of Metal
O’Leary and Trevanion had scarcely left the room when the waiter entered with two letters—the one bore a German post-mark, and was in the well-known hand of Lady Callonby—the other in a writing with which I was no less familiar—that of Emily Bingham.
Let any one who has been patient enough to follow me through these “Confessions,” conceive my agitation at this moment. There lay my fate before me, coupled, in all likelihood, with a view of what it might have been under happier auspices—at least so in anticipation did I read the two unopened epistles. My late interview with Miss Bingham left no doubt upon my mind that I had secured her affections; and acting in accordance with the counsel of Trevanion, no less than of my own sense of right, I resolved upon marrying her, with what prospect of happiness I dared not to think of!
Alas! and alas! there is no infatuation like the taste for flirtation—mere empty, valueless, heartless flirtation. You hide the dice-box and the billiard queue, lest your son become a gambler—you put aside the racing calendar, lest he imbibe a jockey predilection—but you never tremble at his fondness for white muslin and a satin slipper, far more dangerous tastes though they be, and infinitely more perilous to a man’s peace and prosperity than all the “queens of trumps” that ever figured, whether on pasteboard or the Doncaster. “Woman’s my weakness, yer honor,” said an honest Patlander, on being charged before the lord mayor with having four wives living; and without having any such “Algerine act” upon my conscience, I must, I fear, enter a somewhat similar plea for my downfallings, and avow in humble gratitude, that I have scarcely had a misfortune through life unattributable to them in one way or another. And this I say without any reference to country, class, or complexion, “black, brown or fair,” from my first step forth into life, a raw sub. in the gallant 4—th, to this same hour, I have no other avowal, no other confession to make. “Be always ready with the pistol,” was the dying advice of an Irish statesman to his sons: mine, in a similar circumstance, would rather be “Gardez vous des femmes,” and more especially if they be Irish.