Colonel Howard now bade the young officer place his daughter upon the sofa in the after cabin: and having seen her revive, retired and left them alone.
The unfortunate Mary now became calm and collected, and with a heart overflowing with gratitude, and eyes suffused with tears, related to Fitzgerald the events that had transpired since his departure, and the cause of her present voyage amid the horrors and uncertainties of war.
It seems that Count Ampisand had stuffed his clothes with pillows, and that Fitzgerald’s sword had barely grazed his noble body, having been warded off by the feathers that filled his stuffing. This accounted for the entire absence of blood. The count of course soon became convalescent.
Mary Howard ever generous, and feeling that she had been the unhappy cause of the duel, prevailed upon her father to take the wounded foreigner to his house on the night of the duel. Ampisand was delighted with this state of things, and he pressed his suit upon Mary Howard warmly: but she repelled his advances with scorn. Mrs. Wilson, however, and her scandalising circle, could not wait for Count Ampisand to get married in the regular way, and believing in the absence of Fitzgerald that Mary Howard could not refuse the amiable and accomplished count, they prevailed upon a travelling letter writer—one of those drag nets for second-handed news—to put a paragraph in his master’s paper for the fun of it.
This was the notice that Fitzgerald saw, and which had caused him so much terrible agony of mind.
“It is too late to repair the evil,” said Fitzgerald, as he paced the cabin with a countenance tortured by despair.
“It is never too late to do a good action,” said Mary Howard, firmly—“Maurice Fitzgerald you are not the one to bring dishonor upon a patriot father’s name: or to call down the curse of a sainted mother upon your head.” The young man bowed his head upon the rudder case, and the fair girl resumed her narrative.
The arrival of the scandalous paragraph caused the speedy ejection of the count from Colonel Howard’s domicil, in no ceremonious manner, and the instant departure of Mrs. Wilson, bag and baggage.
Colonel Howard raved like a madman for a week; threatened the editor of the offending paper with a prosecution; discovered the perpetrators of the scandal; placarded the whole party as retailers and manufacturers of falsehoods; and posted Count Ampisand as an imposter and a villain in every section of the Union.
The count was shortly afterward tried for stealing spoons and convicted. The next day he changed his lodgings, and occupied a room on the ground floor of the castellated building at Moyamensing, which had but one grate, and that was before the window, while Sanderson, the terror of the genteel sucker, had him served up in his amusing diary of a Philadelphia Landlord on the next Saturday.