I am ill at these descriptions: I confess it. Seventy years and seven, with clouds that hang upon my setting sun, will chill the brain, that should devise scenes and descriptions warm with youthful love. Still the chaste maiden and the prudent wife shall turn these leaves with no revolting hand, nor blush for having read them. The friend of man will find no fault with me for having given a dark shade here and there upon my canvass to set off and contrast the brighter tints and nobler attributes of human nature. Whether in novel, drama or in poem, I love the mirror, that presents mankind in amiable lights; nor can I think that frowns or wrinkles are a mark of wisdom; or that asperity becomes the face of critic or philosopher.
Whilst I write this, my grandson, a brave youth, of six years service in the royal navy, born, as I vainly hoped, to grace my name, and recompense the cares, that I bestowed upon his education, lies (as ’twere before me) dead and as yet unburied: Whilst I not only mourn his loss, but feel his wrongs, of which the world must hear, if the appeal, that he had made to justice, is cut short by his untimely death.
Where then can a heart-wounded man, like me, find comfort but with that beloved daughter, to whom I gave the memoirs of my life, and who still lives to cheer its short remains? To her I dedicate this humble work; for these repeated testimonies of my love, are all the inheritance I can bequeath her, all my hard fortune hath not wrested from me.
BOOK THE SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
Morgan of Glen Morgan arrives at Kray Castle.
The preparations, requisite for John De Lancaster’s departure, necessarily involved a delay of some two or three days, and every hand, as well as every heart, was occupied in that interesting business. The cheerfulness of Major Wilson kept up the spirits of the ladies, except upon one occasion, when he launched out so vehemently in his description of Miss Devereux’s charms, that, if he had not been so wholly taken up with his subject, he might have discovered one countenance at least in the circle of his hearers, that was not much enlivened by his raptures.
In the afternoon a messenger from Glen Morgan arrived with the following letter addressed to Colonel Wilson—