“Which, therefore, you do not decline,” said she, with a very peculiar smile.
“With your companionship, I should call it a paradise,” said he.
“And without such?”
“Such a sacrifice as one must never shrink from at the call of duty,” said he, bowing profoundly.
The Princess dined that day with the Countess of Glencore, and Sir Horace Upton journeyed towards England.
CHAPTER LIV. THE END
Tears have gone over, and once more—it is for the last time—we come back to the old castle in the West, beside the estuary of the Killeries. Neglect and ruin have made heavy inroads on it. The battlements of the great tower have fallen. Of the windows, the stormy winds of the Atlantic have left only the stone mullions. The terrace is cumbered with loose stones and fallen masonry. Not a trace of the garden remains, save in the chance presence of some flowering plant or shrub, half-choked by weeds, and wearing out a sad existence in uncared-for solitude. The entrance-gate is closely barred and fastened, but a low portal, in a side wing, lies open, entering by which we can view the dreary desolation within. The apartments once inhabited by Lord Glencore are all dismantled and empty. The wind and the rain sweep at will along the vaulted corridors and through the deep-arched chambers. Of the damp, discolored walls and ceilings, large patches litter the floors with fragments of stucco and carved architraves.
One small chamber, on the ground-floor, maintains a habitable aspect. Here a bed and a few articles of furniture, some kitchen utensils and a little bookshelf, all neatly and orderly arranged, show that some one calls this a home! Sad and lonely enough is it! Not a sound to break the weary stillness, save the deep roar of the heavy sea; not a living voice, save the wild shrill cry of the osprey, as he soars above the barren cliffs! It is winter, and what desolation can be deeper or gloomier! The sea-sent mists wrap the mountains and even the lough itself in their vapory shroud. The cold thin rain falls unceasingly; a cheerless, damp, and heavy atmosphere dwells even within doors; and the gray half light gives a shadowy indistinctness even to objects at hand, disposing the mind to sad and dreary imaginings.
In a deep straw chair, beside the turf fire, sits a very old man, with a large square volume upon his knee. Dwarfed by nature and shrunk by years, there is something of almost goblin semblance in the bright lustre of his dark eyes, and the rapid motion of his lips as he reads to himself half aloud. The almost wild energy of his features has survived the wear and tear of time, and, old as he is, there is about him a dash of vigor that seems to defy age. Poor Billy Traynor is now upwards of eighty; but his faculties are clear, his memory unclouded, and, like Moses, his eye not dimmed. “The Three Chronicles of Loughdooner,” in which he is reading, is the history of the Glencores, and contains, amongst its family records, many curious predictions and prophecies. The heirs of that ancient house were, from time immemorial, the sport of fortune, enduring vicissitudes without end. No reverses seemed ever too heavy to rally from; no depth of evil fate too deep for them to extricate themselves. Involved in difficulties innumerable, engaged in plots, conspiracies, luckless undertakings, abortive enterprises, still they contrived to survive all around them, and come out with, indeed, ruined fortunes and beggared estate, but still with life, and with what is the next to life itself, an unconquerable energy of character.