“Pat, Pat. Do you really regret to leave me? and will you—”
“Return in a month, and make ye Mrs. Patrick Fitzmaurice.”
She flung herself upon my breast—placed a little billet in my hand—inquired how many days in England we reckoned for September; when a gruff voice exclaimed behind, “Mr. Fitzmaurice, Major Oldham is waiting to see the detachment march off, and if you’re not at his elbow in a pig’s whisper, why, he swore by the eternal frost! he’ll report you to the general to-morrow morning.”
“Agatha, my own Agatha!”
“Pat, my darling Pat!”
A long, last, kiss (vide the Corsair, for a particular account of a kiss of this description) succeeded—“Fall in, men,” said the sergeant, and in another minute poor Agatha was on the sofa, and I in the street.
“Agatha!” I exclaimed, as I passed the window whence, “like Nioobe, all tears,” she watched the detachment move off, “Agatha, on that festival you named, expect me.”
“And that’s Tib’s eve,” * said an incredulous scoundrel, who overheard the promise—The bugler played Paddy Carey—an angle of the street intervened.—It was the last I saw of Agatha.
* An Irish festival, which is said to fall “neither before
nor after Christmas.”
When we halted for the night, I took the little packet from my breast and examined its contents. It contained a billet that professed eternal constancy, and a tress of glossy hair, black as the raven’s wing.