“I declare, sir, I don’t know yet—my poor head is in such a state—and the horses happen not to be uppermost.”
“I protest, Harry, you perfectly astonish me, by the sedateness of your mind and manner. You are certainly wonderfully formed and improved since I saw you last—but, how! in the name of wonder, in the Black Islands, how I cannot conceive,” said Sir Ulick.
“As to sedateness, you know, sir, since I saw you last, I may well be sobered a little, for I have suffered—not a little,” said Harry.
“Suffered! how?” said Sir Ulick, leaning his arm on the mantel-piece opposite to him, and listening with an air of sympathy—“suffered! I was not aware—”
“You know, sir, I have lost an excellent friend.”
“Poor Corny—ay, my poor cousin, as far as he could, I am sure, he wished to be a friend to you.”
“He wished to be, and was,” said Ormond.
“It would have been better for him and his daughter too,” resumed Sir Ulick, “if he had chosen you for his son-in-law, instead of the coxcomb to whom Dora is going to be married: yet I own, as your guardian, I am well pleased that Dora, though a very pretty girl, is out of your way—you must look higher—she was no match for you.”
“I am perfectly sensible, sir, that we should never have been happy together.”
“You are a very sensible young man, Ormond—you make me admire you, seriously—I always foresaw what you would be Ah! if Marcus—but we’ll not talk of that now. Terribly dissipated—has spent an immensity of money already—but still, when he speaks in parliament he will make a figure. But good bye, good night; I see you are in a hurry to get away from me.”