“I am; and as such I desire, on this occasion, not to hear what I ought neither to repeat nor to keep secret. It is my duty not to leave my benefactor in the dark as to any point.”
“Oh! come—come,” interrupted Connal, “we had better not take it on this serious tone, lest, if we begin to talk of duty, we should presently conceive it to be our duty to run one another through the body, which would be no pleasure.”
“No pleasure,” said Ormond; “but if it became a duty, I hope, on all occasions, I should be able to do whatever I thought a duty. Therefore to avoid any misunderstanding, Mr. Connal, let me beg that you will not honour me farther with your confidence. I cannot undertake to be the confidant of any one, of whom I have never professed myself to be the friend.”
“Ca suffit,” said Connal, lightly. “We understand one another now perfectly’—you shall in future play the part of prince, and not of confidant. Pardon me, I forgot your highness’s pretensions;” so saying, he gaily turned on his heel, and left the room.
From this time forward little conversation passed between Mr. Connal and Ormond—little indeed between Ormond and Dora. With Mademoiselle, Ormond had long ceased to be a favourite, and even her loquacity now seldom addressed itself to him. He was in a painful situation;—he spent as much of his time as he could at the farm his friend had given him. As soon as O’Shane found that there was no truth in the report of Black Connal’s intended marriage in England, that he claimed in earnest his promise of his daughter, and that Dora herself inclined to the new love, his kind heart felt for poor Harry.
Though he did not know all that had passed, yet he saw the awkwardness and difficulty of Ormond’s present situation, and, whatever it might cost him to part with his young friend, with his adopted son, Corny determined not to detain him longer.
“Harry Ormond, my boy,” said he to him one day, “time for you to see something of the world, also for the world to see something of you; I’ve kept you here for my own pleasure too long: as long as I had any hope of settling you as I wished ‘twas a sufficient excuse to myself; but now I have none left—I must part with you: and so, by the blessing, God helping me to conquer my selfishness, and the yearnings of my heart towards you, I will. I mean,” continued he, “to send you far from me—to banish you for your good from the Black Islands entirely. Nay, don’t you interrupt me, nor say a word; for if you do, I shall be too soft to have the heart to do you justice. You know you said yourself, and I felt it for you, that it was best you should leave this. Well, I have been thinking of you ever since, and licking different projects into shape for you—listening too to every thing Connal threw out; but all he says that way is in the air—no substance, when you try to have and to hold—too full of himself, that youngster, to be a friend to another.”
“There is no reason why he should be my friend, sir,” said Ormond—“I do not pretend to be his; and I rejoice in not being under any obligations to him.”
“Right!—and high!—just as I feel for you. After all, I approve of your own wish to go into the British service in preference to any foreign service, and you could not be of the Irish brigade—Harry.”
“Indeed, sir, I infinitely prefer,” said Ormond, “the service of my own country—the service in which my father—I know nothing of my father, but I have always heard him spoken of as a good officer; I hope I shall not disgrace his name. The English service for me, sir, if you please.”