“I should like to think it so,” said Darcy, feelingly; “it would be a great source of pride to me at this moment, when my fortunes are lower than ever they were,—lower than ever I anticipated they might be,—to know that my benefactor was the Monarch. In any case I must lose no time in acknowledging this mark of favor. It is now the 4th of the month; to be in London by the 14th, I should leave this to-morrow.”
“It is better to do so,” said Lady Eleanor, with an utterance from which a great effort had banished all agitation; “Helen and I are safe and well here, and as happy as we can be when away from you and Lionel.”
“Poor Lionel!” said the Knight, tenderly; “what good news for him it would be were they to give me some staff appointment,—I might have him near us. Come, Eleanor,” added he, with more gayety of manner, “I feel a kind of presentiment of good tidings. But we are forgetting Bagenal Daly all this time; perhaps this letter of his may throw some light on the matter.”
Darcy now broke the seal of Daly's note, which, even for him, was one of the briefest. This was so far fortunate, since his writing was in his very worst style, blotted and half erased in many places, scarcely legible anywhere. It was only by assembling a “committee of the whole house” that the Darcys were enabled to decipher even a portion of this unhappy document. As well as it could be rendered, it ran somewhat thus:—
“The verdict is against us; old Bretson never forgave you carrying away the medal from him in Trinity some fifty years back; he charged dead against you; I always said he would. Summum jus, summa injuria—The Chief Justice—the greatest wrong! and the jury the fellows who lived under you, in your own town, and their fathers and grandfathers! at least, as many of the rascals as had such.—Never mind, Bicknell has moved for a new trial; they have gained the 'Habere' this time, and so has O'Halloran—you heard of the thrashing—”
Here two tremendous patches of ink left some words that followed quite unreadable.
“What can this mean?” said Darcy, repeating the passage over three or four times, while Helen made no effort to enlighten him in the difficulty. Battled in all his attempts, he read on: “'I saw him in his way through Dublin last night,' Who can he possibly mean?” said Darcy, laying down the letter, and pondering for several minutes.
“O'Halloran, perhaps,” said Lady Eleanor, in vain seeking a better elucidation.
“Oh, not him, of course!” cried Darcy; “he goes on to say, that 'he is a devilish high-spirited young fellow, and for an Englishman a warm-blooded animal.' Really this is too provoking; at such a time as this he might have taken pains to be a little clearer,” exclaimed Darcy.
The letter concluded with some mysterious hints about intelligence that a few days might disclose, but from what quarter or on what subject nothing was said, and it was actually with a sense of relief Darcy read the words, “Yours ever, Bagenal Daly,” at the foot of the letter, and thus spared himself the torment of further doubts and guesses.