“Why, upon my soul, Barney, you used of ould to bring out only one lie at a time but now you give them in pairs. 'Isn't my name Norton?' says you. I kept the saicret bekaise you never meddled with Lord Cullamore or Lady Emily, or attempted your tricks on them, and for that raison you ought to thank me. Here's a note from Lord Dunroe, who looks as black as midnight.”
“What! a note from Dunroe!” exclaimed Norton. “Why he only left me this minute! What the deuce can this mean?”
He opened the note, and read, to his dismay and astonishment as follows:
“Infamous and treacherous scoundrel,—I have this moment received your letter to Mr. Birney, enclosed by that gentleman to me, in which you offer, for a certain sum, to betray me, by placing in the hands of my enemies the very documents you pretended to have destroyed. I now know the viper I have cherished—begone. You are a cheat, an impostor, and a villain, whose name is not Norton, but Bryan, once a horse-jockey on the Curragh, and obliged to fly the country for swindling and dishonesty. Remove your things instantly; but that shall not prevent me from tracing you and handing you over to justice for your knavery and fraud.
“DUNROE.”
“All right! Morty—-all right!” exclaimed Norton; “upon my soul, Dunroe is too generous. You know he is going to be married to-day. Was that Roberts who went up stairs?”
“It was the young officer, if that's his name,” replied Morty.
“All right! Morty; he's to be groom's-man—that will do; this requires no answer. The generous fellow has made me a present on his wedding-day. That will do, Morty; you may go.”
“All's discovered,” he exclaimed, when Morty was gone; “however, it's not too late: I shall give him a Roland for his Oliver before we part. It will be no harm to give the the respectable old nobleman a hint of what's going on, at any rate. This discovery, however, won't signify, for I know Dunroe. The poor fool has no self-reliance; but if left to himself would die. He possesses no manly spirit of independent will, no firmness, no fixed principle—he is, in fact, a noun adjective, and cannot stand alone. Depraved in his appetites and habits of life, he cannot live without some hanger-on to enjoy his freaks of silly and senseless profligacy, who can praise and laugh at him, and who will act at once as his butt, his bully, his pander, and his friend; four capacities in which I have served him—at his own expense, be it said. No; my ascendancy over him has been too long established, and I know that, like a prime minister who has been hastily dismissed, I shall be ultimately recalled. And yet he is not without gleams of sense, is occasionally sprightly, and has perceptions of principle that might have made him a man—an individual being: but now, having neither firmness, resolution to carry out a good purpose, nor self-respect, he is a miserable and wretched cipher, whose whole value depends on the figure that is next him. Yes, I know—I feel—he will recall me to his councils.”
At length the hour of half-past eleven arrived, and in Sir Thomas Gourlay's drawing-room were assembled all those who had been asked to be present, or to take the usual part in the marriage ceremony. Dr. Sombre, the clergyman of the parish, had just arrived, and, having entered the drawing-room, made a bow that would not have disgraced a bishop. He was pretty well advanced in years, excessively stupid, and possessed so vile a memory for faces, that he was seldom able to recognize his own guests, if he happened to meet them in the streets on the following day. He was an expectant for preferment in the church, and if the gift of a good appetite were a successful recommendation for a mitre, as that of a strong head has been before now, no man was better entitled to wear it. Be this as it may, the good man, who expected to partake of an excellent dejuner, felt that it was a portion of his duty to give a word or two of advice to the young couple upon the solemn and important duties into the discharge of which they were about to enter. Accordingly, looking round the room, he saw Mr. Roberts and Lady Emily engaged, at a window, in what appeared to him to be such a conversation as might naturally take place between parties about to be united. Lucy had not yet made her appearance, but Dunroe was present, and on seeing the Rev. Doctor join them, was not at all sorry at the interruption. This word of advice, by the way, was a stereotyped commodity with the Doctor, who had not married a couple for the last thirty years, without palming it on them as an extempore piece of admonition arising from that particular occasion. The worthy man was, indeed, the better qualified to give it, having never been married himself, and might, therefore, be considered as perfectly free from prejudices affecting either party upon the subject.