“It was so when my uncle went away, but I fear I have made great inroads upon it. It was my chief remedy with the poor.”
“With the poor! such wine as this,—the richest grape that ever purpled over the Douro! Do you tell me that you gave this to these—Heaven forgive me, what am I saying? Of course you gave it; you gave them what was fifty times more precious,—the kind ministerings of your own angelic nature, the soft words and soft looks and smiles that a prince might have knelt for. I 'm not worthy to drink another glass of it,” added he, as he pushed the decanter from him towards the centre of the table.
“But you shall, though,” said Mary, filling his glass, “and it shall be a bumper to my health.”
“A toast I'd stake my life for,” said he, reverently, as he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it with all the deference of a courtier. “And now,” added he, refilling his glass, “I drink this to the worthy fellow whose portrait is before me; and may he soon come back again.” He arose as he spoke, and giving his hand to Mary, led her into the drawing-room. “Ay, my dear Miss Mary,” said he, following up the theme in his own thoughts, “it is here your uncle ought to be. When the army is in rout and dismay, the general's presence is the talisman that restores discipline. Everything around us at this moment is full of threatening danger. The catalogue of the assizes is a dark record; I never saw its equal, no more have I ever witnessed anything to compare with the dogged indifference of the men arraigned. The Irishman is half a fatalist by nature; it will be an evil hour that makes him wholly one!”
“But still,” said Mary, “you 'd scarcely counsel his return here at this time. The changes that have taken place would fret him deeply, not to speak of even worse!”
She delivered the last few words in a voice broken and trembling; and Repton, turning quickly towards her, said,—“I know what you point at: the irritated feeling of the people, and that insolent menace they dared to affix to his own door.”
“You heard of that, then?” cried she, eagerly.
“To be sure, I heard of it; and I heard how your own hands tore it down, and riding with it into the midst of them at Kiltimmon market, you said, 'I 'll give five hundred pounds to him who shows me who did this, and I 'll forfeit five hundred more if I do not horsewhip the coward from the county.'”
Mary hid her face within her hands; but closely as she pressed them there, the warm tears would force their way through, and fall, dropping on her bosom.
“You are a noble girl,” cried he, in ecstasy; “and in all your great trials there is nothing finer than this, that the work of your benevolence has never been stayed by the sense of ill-requital, and you have never involved the character of a people in the foul crime of a miscreant.”