When, on the following morning, Charles Heathcote repaired to the hotel where he had left his friend Lord Agincourt, he was surprised to hear the sound of voices and laughter as he drew nigh the room; nor less astonished was he, on entering, to discover O'Shea seated at the breakfast-table, and manifestly in the process of enjoying himself. Had there been time to retire undetected, Heathcote would have done so, for his head was far too full of matters of deep interest to himself to desire the presence of a stranger, not to say that he had a communication to make to his friend both delicate and difficult. O'Shea's quick glance had, however, caught him at once, and he cried out, “Here's the very man we wanted to make us complete,—the jolliest party of three that ever sat down together.”

“I scarcely thought to see you in these parts,” said Heathcote, with more of sulk than cordiality in the tone.

“Your delight ought to be all the greater, though, maybe, it is n't! You look as glum as the morning I won your trap and the two nags.”

“By the way, what became of them?” asked Heathcote.

“I sold the chestnut to a young cornet in the Carabineers. He saw me ride him through all the bonfires in Sackville Street the night the mob beat the police, and he said he never saw his equal to face fire; and he was n't far wrong there, for the beast was stone blind.”

“And the gray?”

“The gray is here, in Rome, and in top condition; and if I don't take him over five feet of timber, my name is n't Gorman.” A quick wink and a sly look towards Agincoort conveyed to Heathcote the full meaning of this speech.

“And you want a high figure for him?” asked he.

“If I sell him,—if I sell him at all; for you see, if the world goes well with me, and I have a trump or two in my hand, I won't part with that horse. It's not every day in the week that you chance on a beast that can carry fifteen stone over a stiff country,—ay, and do it four days in the fortnight!”

“What's his price?” asked Agincourt.

“Let him tell you,” said O'Shea, with a most expressive look at Heathcote. “He knows him as well or better than I do.”

“Yes,” said Heathcote, tantalizing him on purpose; “but when a man sets out by saying, 'I don't want to sell my horse,' of course it means, 'If you will have him, you must pay a fancy price.'”

If O'Shea's expression could be rendered in words, it might be read thus: “And if that be the very game I'm playing, ain't you a downright idiot to spoil it?”

“Well,” said Agincourt, after a pause, “I 'm just in the sort of humor this morning to do an extravagant thing, or a silly one.”

“Lucky fellow!” broke in Heathcote, “for O'Shea's the very man to assist you to your project.”

“I am!” said O'Shea, firmly and quickly; “for there's not the man living has scattered his money more freely than myself. Before I came of age, when I was just a slip of a boy, about nineteen—”

“Never mind the anecdote, old fellow,” said Heathcote, laughingly, as he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. “Agincourt has just confessed himself in the frame of mind to be 'done.' Do him, therefore, by all means. Say a hundred and fifty for the nag, and he 'll give it, and keep your good story for another roguery.”

“Isn't he polite?—isn't he a young man of charming manners and elegant address?” said O'Shea, with a strange mixture of drollery and displeasure.

“He's right, at all events,” said Agincourt, laughing at the other's face; “he's right as regards me. I 'll give you a hundred and fifty for the horse without seeing him.”

“Oh, mother of Moses! I wish your guardian was like you.”

“Why so? What do you mean?”

“I mean this,—that I wish he 'd buy me, too, without seeing me!” And then, seeing that by their blank looks they had failed to catch his meaning, he added, “Is n't he one of the Cabinet now?”

“Yes, he is Colonial Secretary.”

“That 's the very fellow I want. He 's giving away things every day, that any one of them would be the making of me.”

“What would you take?”

“Whatever I 'd get. There's my answer. Whatever I 'd get I'd be a Bishop, or a Judge, or a boundary Commissioner, or a Treasurer,—I 'd like to be that best,—or anything in reason they could offer a man of good family, and who had a seat in the House.”

“I think you might get him something; I'm sure you might,” said Heathcote.

“Well, I can try, at all events. I 'll write to-day.”

“Will you really?”

“I give you my word on it. I 'll say that, independently of all personal claims of your own, you 're an intimate and old friend, whose advancement I will accept as a favor done to myself.”

“That's the ticket. But mind no examination,—no going before the Civil Service chaps. I tell you fairly, I would n't take the Governor-Generalship of India if I had to go up for the multiplication-table. I think I see myself sitting trembling before them, one fellow asking me, 'Who invented “pitch and toss”?' and another inquiring 'Who was the first man ever took pepper with oysters?'”

“Leave all that to Agincourt,” said Heathcote; “he'll explain to his guardian that you were for several sessions a distinguished member of the House—”

“'T was I that brought 'crowing' in. I used to crow like a cock when old Sibthorp got up, and set them all off laughing.”

“I 'll mention your public services—”

“And don't say that I 'm hard up. Don't make it appear that it 's because I 'm out at the elbows I 'm going, but just a whim,—the way Gladstone went to Greece the other day; that's the real dodge, for they keep the Scripture in mind up in Downing Street, and it's always the 'poor they send empty away.'”

“And you'll dine with us here, at seven?” said Agincourt, rising from the table.

“That 's as much as to say, 'Cut your lucky now, Gorman; we don't want you till dinner-time.'”

“You forget that he has got the letter to write about you,” said Heathcote. “You don't want him to lose a post?”

“And the gray horse?”

“He's mine; I 've bought him.”

“I suppose you 've no objection to my taking a canter on him this morning?”

“Ride him, by all means,” said Agincourt, shaking his hand cordially while he said adieu.

“Why did you ask him to dinner to-day?” said Heathcote, peevishly. “I wanted you to have come over and dined with us. My father is eager to see you, and so is May.”

“Let us go to tea, then. And how are they?—how is he looking?”

“Broken,—greatly broken. I was shocked beyond measure to see him so much aged since we met, and his spirits gone,—utterly gone.”

“Whence is all this?”

“He says that I deserted him,—that he was forsaken.”

“And is he altogether wrong, Charley? Does not conscience prick you on that score?”

“He says, too, that I have treated May as cruelly and as unjustly; also, that I have broken up their once happy home. In fact, he lays all at my door.”

“And have you seen her?”

“Yes, we had a meeting last night, and a long talk this morning; and, indeed, it was about that I wanted to speak to you when I found O'Shea here. Confound the fellow! he has made the thing more difficult than ever, for I have quite forgotten how I had planned it all.”

“Planned it all! Surely there was no need of a plan, Charley, in anything that you meant to say to me?”

“Yes, but there was, though. You have very often piqued me by saying that I never knew my own mind from one day to another, that you were always prepared for some change of intention in me, and that nothing would surprise you less than that I should 'throw you over' the very day before we were to sail for India.”

“Was I very, very unjust, Charley?” said he, kindly.

“I think you were, and for this reason: he who is master of his own fate, so far as personal freedom and ample fortune can make him, ought not to judge rashly of the doubts and vacillations and ever changing purposes of him who has to weigh fifty conflicting influences. The one sufficiently strong to sway others may easily take his line and follow it; the other is the slave of any incident of the hour, and must be content to accept events, and not mould them.”

“I read it all, Charley. You 'll not go out?”

“I will not.”

Agincourt repressed the smile that was fast gathering on his lips, and, in a grave and quiet voice, said, “And why?”

“For the very reason you have so often given me. She cares for me; she has told me so herself, and even asked me not to leave them! I explained to her that I had given you not only a promise, but a pledge, that, unless you released me, I was bound in honor to accompany you. She said, 'Will you leave this part of the matter to me?' and I answered, 'No, I'll go frankly to him, and say, “I'm going to break my word with you: I have to choose between May Leslie and you, and I vote for her.''”

“What a deal of self-sacrifice it might have saved you, Charley,” said he, laughing, “had you seen this telegram which came when I had sat down to breakfast.” It came from the Horse Guards, sent by some private friend of Agincourt' s, and was in these words: “The row is over, no more drafts for India, do not go.”

Heathcote read and re-read the paper for several minutes. “So, then, for once I have luck on my side. My resolve neither wounds a friend nor hurts my own self-esteem. Of course you 'll not go?”

“Certainly not. I 'll not go out to hunt the lame ducks that others have wounded.”

“You 'll let me take this and show it to my father,” said Heathcote. “He shall learn the real reason of my stay hereafter, but for the present this will serve to make him happy; and poor May, too, will be spared the pain of thinking that in yielding to her wish I have jeopardized a true friendship. I can scarcely believe all this happiness real, Agincourt. After so long a turn of gloom and despondency, I cannot trust myself to think that fortune means so kindly by me. Were it not for one unhappy thought,—one only,—I could say I have nothing left to wish for.”

“And what is that?—Is it anything in which I can be of service to you?”

“No, my dear fellow; if it were, I'd never have said it was a cause for sorrow. It is a case, however, equally removed from your help as from mine. I told you some time back that my father, yielding to a game of cleverly played intrigue, had determined to marry this widow, Mrs. Penthony Morris, whom you remember. So long as the question was merely mooted in gossip, I could not allude to it; but when he wrote himself to me on the subject, I remonstrated with him as temperately as I was able. I adverted to their disproportion of age, their dissimilarity of habits; and, lastly, I spoke out and told him that we knew nothing, any of us, of this lady, her family, friends, or connections; that though I had inquired widely, I never met the man who could give me any information about her, or had ever heard of her husband. I wrote all this, and much more of the same kind, in the strain of frank confidence a son might employ towards his father, particularly when they had long lived together in relations of the dearest and closest affection. I waited eagerly for his answer. Some weeks went over, and then there came a letter, not from him, but from her. The whole mischief was out: he had given her my letter, and said, 'Answer it.' I will show you her epistle one of these days. It is really clever. There wasn't a word of reproach,—not an angry syllable in the whole of it She was pained, fretted, deeply fretted by what I had written, but she acknowledged that I had, if I liked to indulge them, reasonable grounds for all my distrusts, though, perhaps, it might have been more generous to oppose them. At first, she said, she had resolved to satisfy all my doubts by the names and circumstances of her connections, with every detail of family history and fortune; but, on second thoughts, her pride revolted against a step so offensive to personal dignity, and she had made up her mind to confine these revelations to my father, and then leave his roof forever. 'Writing,' continued she, 'as I now do, without his knowledge of what I say,—for, with a generous confidence in me that I regret is not felt in other quarters, he has refused to read my letter,—I may tell you that I shall place my change of purpose on such grounds as can never possibly endanger your future relations with your father. He shall never suspect, in fact, from anything in my conduct, that my departure was influenced in the slightest degree by what has fallen from you. The reasons I will give him for my step will refer solely to circumstances that refer to myself. Go back, therefore, in all confidence and love, and give your whole affection to one who needs and who deserves it!

“There was, perhaps, a slight tendency to dilate upon what ought to constitute my duties and regards; but, on the whole, the letter was well written and wonderfully dispassionate. I was sorely puzzled how to answer it, or what course to take, and might have been more so, when my mind was relieved by a most angry epistle from my father, accusing me roundly, not only of having wilfully forsaken him, but having heartlessly insulted the very few who compassionated his lonely lot, and were even ready to share it.

“This ended our correspondence, and I never wrote again till I mentioned my approaching departure for India, and offered, if he wished it, to take Italy on my way and see him once more before I went. To this there came the kindest answer, entreating me to come and pass as many days as I could with him. It was all affection, but evidently written in great depression of mind and spirits. There were three lines of a postscript, signed 'Louisa,' assuring me that none more anxiously looked forward to my visit than herself; that she had a pardon to crave of me, and would far rather sue for it in person than on paper. 'As you are coming,' said she, 'I will say no more, for when you do come you will both pity and forgive me.'”

As Heathcote had just finished the last word, the door of the room was quietly opened, and O'Shea peeped in. “Are you at the letter? for, if you are, you might as well say, 'Mr. Gorman O'Shea was never violent in his politics, but one of those who always relied upon the good faith and good will of England towards his countrymen.' That's a sentence the Whigs delight in, and I remark it's the sure sign of a good berth.”

“Yes, yes, I 'll book it; don't be afraid,” said Agincourt, laughing; and the late member for Inch retired, fully satisfied. “Go on, Charley; tell me the remainder.”

“There is no more to tell; you have heard all. Since I arrived I have not seen her. She has been for two days confined to bed with a feverish cold, and, apprehending something contagious, she will not let May visit her. I believe, however, it is a mere passing illness, and I suppose that to-morrow or next day we shall meet.”

“And how? for that, I own, is a matter would puzzle me considerably.”

“It will all depend upon her. She must give the key-note to the concert. If she please to be very courteous and affable, and all the rest of it, talk generalities and avoid all questions of real interest, I must accept that tone, and follow it If she be disposed to enter upon private and personal details, I have only to be a listener, except she give me an opportunity to speak out regarding the marriage.” “And you will?”

“That I will. I suspect, shrewdly, that she is mistaken about our circumstances, and confounds May Leslie's means with ours. Now, when she knows that my father has about five hundred a year in the world for everything, it is just possible that she may rue her bargain, and cry 'off.'”

“Scarcely, I think,” said Agincourt. “The marriage would give her station and place at once, if she wants them.”

“What if O'Shea were to supplant Sir William? I half suspect he would succeed. He hasn't a sixpence. It's exactly his own beat to find some one willing to support him.”

“Well, I 'll back myself to get him a place. I 'll not say it will be anything very splendid or lucrative, but something he shall have. Come, Charley, leave this to me. Let O'Shea and myself dine tÊte-À-tÊte to-day, and I 'll contrive to sound him on it.”

“I mean to aid you so far, for I know my father would take it ill were I to dine away from home,—on the first day too; but I own I have no great confidence in your plan, nor any unbounded reliance on your diplomacy.”

“No matter, I'll try it; and, to begin, I'll start at once with a letter to Downing Street I have never asked for anything yet, so I 'll write like one who cannot contemplate a refusal.”

“I wish you success, for all our sakes,” said Charles; and left him.

END OF VOL. I.