I had but just sunk upon the bed, overcome by fatigue and the vehemence of my emotions, when the old nurse entered the room. She said she had brought me a composing draught from the lady Glorvina, who had kissed the cup, after the old Irish fashion, * and bade me to drink it for her sake.
* To this ancient and general custom Goldsmith allude in his
Deserted Village:—=
“And kissed the cup to pass it to the rest.”
“Then I pledge her,” said I, “with the same truth she did me,” and I eagerly quaffed off the nectar her hand had prepared. Meantime the nurse took her station by the bed-side with some appropriate reference to her former attendance there, and the generosity with which that attendance was rewarded; for I had imprudently apportioned my donation rather to my real than apparent rank.
While I was glad that this talkative old woman had fallen in my way; for though I knew I had nothing to hope from that incorruptible fidelity which was grounded on her attachment to her beloved nursling, and her affection for the family she had so long served, yet I had everything to expect from the garrulous simplicity of her character, and her love of what she calls Seanachus, or telling long stories of the Inismore family; and while I was thinking how I should put my Jesuitical scheme into execution, and she was talking as usual I know not what, the beautiful “Breviare du Sentiment” caught my eye lying on the floor:—Glorvina must have dropped it on her first entrance. I desired the nurse to bring it to me; who blessed her stars, and wondered how her child could be so careless: a thing too she valued so much. At that moment it struck me that this Brevaire, the furniture of the boudoir, the vases, and the fragment of a letter, were all connected with this mysterious friend, this “first and best of men.” I shuddered as I held it, and forgot the snow-drops it contained; yet, assuming a composure as I examined its cover, I asked the nurse if she thought I could procure such another in the next market town.
The old woman held her sides while she laughed at the idea; then folding her arms on her knees with that gossiping air which she always assumed when in a mood peculiarly loquacious, she assured me that such a book could not be got in all Ireland; for that it had come from foreign parts to her young lady.
“And who sent it?” I demanded.
“Why, nobody sent it, (she simply replied,) he brought it himself.”
“Who?” said I.
She stammered and paused.