“There—there, no more,” whispered the Sister; and she motioned them both to withdraw. Skeff arose at once, and slipped noiselessly away; but the Colonel stepped boldly along, regardless of everything and every one.
“He 's wandering in his mind,” said M'Caskey, in a loud, unfeeling tone.
“By all that's holy, there's the scoundrel I 'm dying to get at,” screamed Rory, as the voice caught his ear. “Give me that crutch; let me have one lick at him, for the love of Mary.”
“They're all mad here, that's plain,” said M'Caskey, turning away with a contemptuous air. “Sir,” added he, turning towards Skeff, “I have the honor to salute you;” and with a magnificent bow he withdrew, while Rory, in a voice of wildest passion and invective, called down innumerable curses on his head, and inveighed even against the bystanders for not securing the “greatest villain in Europe.” “I shall want to send a letter to Naples,” cried out Skeff to the Colonel; “I mean to remain here;” but M'Caskey never deigned to notice his words, but walked proudly down the stairs, and went his way.
CHAPTER LVII. AT TONY'S BEDSIDE
My story draws to a close, and I have not space to tell how Skeff watched beside his friend, rarely quitting him, and showing in a hundred ways the resources of a kind and thoughtful nature. Tony had been severely wounded; a sabre-cut had severed his scalp, and he had been shot through the shoulder; but all apprehension of evil consequences was now over, and he was able to listen to Skeff's wondrous tidings, and hear all the details of his accession to wealth and fortune. His mother—how she would rejoice at it! how happy it would make her!—not for her own sake, but for his; how it would seem to repay to her all she had suffered from the haughty estrangement of Sir Omerod, and how proud she would be at the recognition, late though it came! These were Tony's thoughts; and very often, when Skeflf imagined him to be following the details of his property, and listening with eagerness to the description of what he owned, Tony was far away in thought at the cottage beside the Causeway, and longing ardently when he should sit at the window with his mother at his side planning out some future in which they were to be no more separated.
There was no elation at his sudden fortune, nor any of that anticipation of indulgence which Skeff himself would have felt, and which he indeed suggested. No. Tony's whole thoughts so much centred in his dear mother, that she entered into all his projects; and there was not a picture of enjoyment wherein she was not a foreground figure.
They would keep the cottage,—that was his first resolve: his mother loved it dearly; it was associated with years long of happiness and of trials too; and trials can endear a spot when they are nobly borne, and the heart will cling fondly to that which has chastened its emotions and elevated its hopes. And then, Tony thought, they might obtain that long stretch of land that lay along the shore, with the little nook where the boats lay at anchor, and where he would have his yacht. “I suppose,” said he, “Sir Arthur Lyle would have no objection to my being so near a neighbor?”
“Of course not; but we can soon settle that point, for they are all here.”