“I have carried everything before me,” replied Ambrose—“but what then? Suppose, my worthy old magister, that I miss a fellowship—why, what remains, but to sink down into a resident mastership, and grind blockheads for the remainder of my life? But what though I fail in science, still, most revered and learned O'Donegan, I have ambition—ambition—and, come how it may, I will surge up out of obscurity, my old buck. I forgot to tell you, that I got the first classical premium yesterday, and that I am consequently—no, I didn't forget to tell you, because I didn't know it myself when I saw you to-day. Hip, hip—hurra!”
His two male companions filled their glasses, and joined him heartily. O'Donegan shook him by the hand, so did Corbet, and they now could understand the cause of his very natural elevation of spirits.
“So you have all got legacies,” proceeded Mr. Ambrose; “fifty pounds apiece, I hear, by the death of your brother, Mr. Corbet, who was steward to Lady Gourlay—I am delighted to hear it—hip, hip, hurra, again.”
“It's true enough,” observed the prophetess, “a good, kind-hearted man was my poor brother Edward.”
“How is that old scoundrel of a Black Baronet in your neighborhood—Sir Thomas—he who murdered his brother's heir?”
“For God's sake, Mr. Ambrose, don't say so. Don't you know that he got heavy damages against Captain Furlong for using the same words?”
“He be hanged,” said the tipsy student; “he murdered him as sure as I sit at this table; and God bless the worthy, be the same man or woman, who left himself, as he left his brother's widow, without an heir to his ill-gotten title and property.”
The fortune-teller rose up, and entreated him not to speak harshly against Sir Thomas Gourlay, adding, “That, perhaps, he was not so bad as the people supposed; but,” she added, “as they—that is, she and her brother—happened to be in town, they were anxious to see him (the student); and, indeed, they would feel obliged if he came with them into the front room for ten minutes or so, as they wished to have a little private conversation with him.”
The change in his features at this intimation was indeed surprising. A keen, sharp sense of self-possession, an instant recollection of his position and circumstances, banished from them, almost in an instant, the somewhat careless and tipsy expression which they possessed on his entrance.
“Certainly,” said he—“Mr. O'Donegan, will you take care of yourself until we return?”