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“Poor fellow! he has been ill for some days back; you know what a superstitious creature he is; and about a week since he got a fright, – some warning of a Banshee, I think; but it shook his nerves greatly, and he has kept his bed almost ever since. Lionel brought over some of these servants with him; but Lord Netherby’s people are Legion, and the servants’ hall now numbers something like seventy, I hear.”

The Knight heaved a sigh; but, catching himself, tried to conceal it by a cough. Lady Eleanor had heard it, however, and stole a quick glance towards him, to evade which he turned abruptly round and spoke to some one near.

“Seventy, my dear Eleanor!” said he, after a pause, and as if he had been reflecting over his last observation; “and what a Babel, too, it must be! I heard French, German, and Italian in the hall; I think we can promise Irish ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Lionel, “it is the most amusing scene in the world. They had a ball last night in the lower gallery, where boleros and jigs succeeded each other, while the refreshments ranged from iced lemonade to burnt whiskey.”

“And what did our worthy folk think of their visitors?” said Darcy, smiling.

“Not over much. Paddy Lennan looked with great contempt at the men sipping orgeat, and when he saw the waltzing, merely remarked, ‘We’ve a betther way of getting round the girls in Ireland;’ while old Pierre Dulange, Netherby’s valet, persists in addressing the native company as ‘Messieurs les Sauvages.’”

“I hope, for the sake of the public peace, they ‘ve not got an interpreter among them.”

“No, no, all’s safe on that score, and freedom of speech has suggested the most perfect code of good manners; for it would seem, as they can indulge themselves in the most liberal reflections on each other, they have no necessity of proceeding to overt acts.”

“Now,” said the Knight, “let me not interrupt the revelry longer. To your place, Lionel, and leave me to pay my devoirs to my friends and kind neighbors.”

The Knight’s presence seemed alone wanting to fill up the measure of enjoyment. Most of those present were his old familiar friends, glad to see once more amongst them the great promoter of kind feeling and hospitality, while from such as were strangers he easily won golden opinions, the charm of courtesy being with him like a well-fitting garment, which graced, but did not impede, the wearer’s motions.

He had a hundred questions to ask and to answer. The news of the capital travelled in those days by slow and easy stages, and the moment was sufficiently eventful to warrant curiosity; and so, as he passed from group to group, he gave the current gossip of the time as each in turn asked after this circumstance or that.

At length he took his place beside Lord Netherby, as he sat engaged at a whist-table, where the gathering crowd that gradually collected soon converted the game into a social circle of eager talkers.

Who could have suspected that easy, unconstrained manner, that winning smile, that ready laugh, the ever-present jest, to cover the working of a heart so nigh to breaking? And yet he talked pleasantly and freely, narrating with all his accustomed humor the chit-chat of the time; and while of course, the great question of the hour occupied every tongue and ear, all Lord Netherby’s practised shrewdness could not enable him to detect the exact part the Knight himself had taken.

“And so they have carried the bill,” said Conolly, with a sigh, as he listened to Darcy’s account of the second reading. “Well, though I never was a Parliament man, nor expected to be one, I’m sorry for it. You think that strange, my Lord?”

“By no means, sir. A man may love monarchy without being the heir apparent.”

“Quite true,” chimed in the Knight. “I would even go further, and say that, without any warm devotion to a king, a man may hate a regicide.”

Lord Netherby’s eyes met Darcy’s, and the wily peer smiled with a significance that seemed to say, “I know you now.”

CHAPTER XXVIIII. THE HUNT-BREAKFAST

The ball lasted till nigh daybreak; and while the greater number of the guests departed, some few remained, by special invitation, at the abbey, to join a hunting party on the following day. For this Lionel had made every possible preparation, desiring to let his English friends witness a favorable specimen of Irish sport and horsemanship. The stud and kennel were both in high condition, the weather favorable, and, as the old huntsman said, “‘It would be hard if a fox would n’t be agreeable enough to give the strange gentlemen a run.”

In high anticipation of the coming morning, and with many a prayer against a frost, they separated for the night. All within the abbey were soon sound asleep, – all save the Knight himself, who, the restraint of an assumed part withdrawn, threw himself on a sofa in his dressing-room, worn out and exhausted by his struggle. Ruin was inevitable, – that he well knew; but as yet the world knew it not, and for Lionel’s sake he resolved to keep his own secret a few days longer. The visit was to last but eight days; two were already over; for the remaining six, then, he determined – whatever it might cost him – to preserve all the appearances of his former estate, to wear the garb and seeming of prosperity, and do the princely honors of a house that was never again to be his home.

“Poor Lionel!” thought he; “‘twould break the boy’s heart if such a disclosure should be made now; the high and daring promptings of his bold spirit would not quail before misfortune, although his courage might not sustain him in the very moment of the reverse. I will not risk the whole fortune of his future happiness in such a trial; he shall know nothing till they are gone; one week of triumphant pleasure he shall have, and then let him brace himself to the struggle, and breast the current manfully.”

While endeavoring to persuade himself that Lionel’s lot was uppermost in his mind, his heart would force the truth upon him that Lady Eleanor and Helen’s fate was, in reality, a heavier stroke of fortune. Lionel was a soldier, ardent and daring, fond of his profession, and far more ambitious of distinction than attached to the life of pleasure a court and a great capital suggested; but they who had never known the want of every luxury that can embellish life, whose whole existence had been like some fairy dream of pleasure, how were they to bear up against the dreadful shock? Lady Eleanor’s health was frail and delicate in the extreme; Helen’s attachment to her mother such that any impression on her would invariably recoil upon herself. What might be the consequences of the disclosure to them Darcy could not, dared not, contemplate.

As he revolved all these things in his mind, and thought upon the difficulties that beset him, he was at a loss whether to deplore the necessity of wearing a false face of pleasure a few days longer, or rejoice at the occasion of even this brief reprieve from ruin. Thus passed the weary hours that preceded daybreak, and while others slept soundly, or reviewed in their dreams the pleasures of the past night, Darcy’s gloomy thoughts were fixed upon the inevitable calamity of his fate, and the years, few but sad, that in all likelihood were now before him.

The stir and bustle of the servants preparing breakfast for the hunting party broke in upon his dreary revery, and he suddenly bethought him of the part he had assigned himself to play. He dreaded the possibility of an interview with Lady Eleanor, in which she would inevitably advert to Gleeson, and the circumstances of his flight; this could not be avoided, however, were he to pass the day at home, and so he resolved to join the hunting-field, where perhaps some lingering trace of his old enthusiasm for the sport might lead him to hope for a momentary relief of mind.

“Lionel, too, will be glad to see me in the saddle – it’s some years since I crossed the sward at a gallop – and I am curious to know if a man’s nerve is stouter when the world looks fair before him, or when the night of calamity is lowering above his head.” Muttering these words to himself, he passed out into the hall, and crossing which, entered the courtyard, and took his way towards the stables. It was still dark, but many lights were moving to and fro, and the groom population were all about and stirring. Darcy opened the door and looked down the long range of stalls, where above twenty saddle-horses were now standing, the greater number of them highly bred and valuable animals, and all in the highest possible condition. Great was the astonishment of the stablemen as the Knight moved along, throwing a glance as he went at each stall, while a muttered “Welcome home to yer honor” ran from mouth to mouth.

“The bastes is looking finely, sir,” said Bob Carney, who, as stud-groom and huntsman, had long presided over his department.

“So they are, Bob, but I don’t know half of them; where did this strong brown horse come from?”

“That’s Clipper, yer honor; I knew you wouldn’t know him. He took up finely after his run last winter.”

“And the fore leg, is it strong again?”

“As stout as a bar of iron; one of the boys had him out two days ago, and he took the yellow ditch flying: we measured nineteen feet between the mark of his hoofs.”

“He ought to be strong enough to carry me, Bob.”

“Don’t ride him, sir, he’s an uncertain divil; and though he ‘ll go straight over everything for maybe twenty minutes or half an hour, he ‘ll stop short at a drain not wider than a potato furrow, and the power of man would n’t get him over it.”

“That’s a smart gray yonder, – what is she?”

“She’s the one we tried as a leader one day; yer honor remembers you bid me shoot her, or get rid of her, for she kicked the traces, and nearly the wheel-horse, all to smash; and now she’s the sweetest tiling to ride, for eleven stone, in the whole country. There’s an English colonel to try her to-day; my only advice to him is, let her have her own way of it, for, if he begins pulling at her, ‘t is maybe in Donegal he ‘ll be before evening.”

“And what have you for me?” said the Knight; “for I scarcely know any of my old friends here.”

“There’s the mouse-colored cob – ”

“No, no,” said the Knight, laughing; “I want to keep my place, Bob. You must give me something better than that.”

“Faith, an’ your honor might have worse; but if it’s for riding you are, take Black Peter, and you ‘ll never find the fence too big, or the ground too heavy for him. I was going to give him to the English lord; I suppose, after all, he ‘ll be better pleased with the cob.”

“Well, then, Peter for me. And now let’s see what Mr. Lionel has to ride.”

“There she is, and a beauty!” said Bob, as, with a dexterous jerk, he chucked a sheet off her haunches, and displayed the shining flanks and splendid proportions of a thoroughbred mare. “That’s Cushleen,” said he, as he fixed his eyes on the Knight’s face to enjoy the reflection of his own delight. “That’s the darlin’ can do it! – a child can hould her, but it takes a man to sit on her back – racing speed over a flat, and a jump! – ‘t is more like the bound of a football than anything else.”

“She has the eye of a hot one, Bob.”

“And why would n’t she? But she knows when to be so. Let her take her place at the head of the whole field, with a light finger to guide and a stout heart to direct her, and she’s a kitten; but the divil a tiger was ever as fierce if another passes her, or a cowardly hand would try to hold her back. And there ‘s a nate tool, that black horse, – that ‘s for another of the English gentlemen. Master Lionel calls him Sir Harry. They tell me he ‘s a fine rider, and has a pack of hounds himself in his own place, and I am mistaken if he has the baste in his stable will give him a betther day’s sport. The chestnut here is for Miss Helen, for she’s coming to see them throw off, and it’ll be a fine sight; we ‘ll be thirty-six out of your honor’s stables, Mr. Conolly is bringing nine more, and all the Martins, and the Lynches, and Dalys, and Mr. Hickman O’Reilly and his son, – though, to be sure, they won’t do much for the honor of ould Ireland.”

The Knight turned away laughing, and re-entered the house.

Early as it yet was, the inmates of the abbey were stirring, and a great breakfast, laid for above thirty, was prepared in the library, for the supper-tables occupied the dining-rooms, and the débris of the magnificent entertainment of the night before still lingered there. Two cheerful fires blazed on the ample hearths, and threw a mellow lustre over that spacious room, where old Tate now busied himself in those little harmless duties he fancied indispensable to the Knight’s comfort, for the poor fellow, on hearing of his master’s return, had once more resumed his office.

The Knight’s meeting with him was one of true friendship; difference of station interposed no barrier to affection, and Darcy shook the old man’s hand as cordially as though they were brothers. Yet each was sad with a secret sorrow, which all their efforts could scarce conceal from the other. In vain the Knight endeavored to turn away old Tate’s attention by inquiries after his health, questions about home, or little flatteries about his preparations, Tate’s filmy eyes were fixed upon his master with a keenness that age could not dim.

“‘T is maybe tired your honor is,” said he, in a voice half meant as inquiry, half insinuation; “the Parliament, they tell me, destroys the health entirely.”

“Very true, Tate; late hours, heated rooms, and some fatigue will not serve a man of my age; but I am tolerably well for all that.”

“God be praised for it!” said Tate, piously, but in a voice that showed it was rather a wish he expressed than a conviction, when, suspecting that he had suffered some portion of his fears to escape, he added more cheerfully, “And is n’t Master Lionel grown an iligant, fine young man! When I seen him comin’ up the stairs, it was just as if the forty-eight years that’s gone over was only a dhrame, and I was looking at your honor the day you came home from college; he has the same way with bis arms, and carries his head like you, and the same light step. Musha!” muttered he, below his breath, “the ould families never die out, but keep their looks to the last.”

“He’s a fine fellow, Tate!” said the Knight, turning towards the window, for, while flattered by the old man’s praises of his son, a deep pang shot through his heart at the wide disparity of fortune with which life opened for both of them. At the instant an arm was drawn round him, and Helen stood at his side: she was in her riding-habit, and looking in perfect beauty. Darcy gazed at her for a few seconds, and with such evident admiration that she, as if accepting the compliment, drew herself up, and, smiling, said, “Yes, nothing short of conquest. Lionel told his friends to expect a very unformed country girl; they shall see at least she can ride.”

“No harebrained risks, Helen, dearest. I’m to take the field to-day, and you must n’t shake my nerve; for I want to bring no disgrace on my county.”

“I was but jesting, my own dear papa,” said she, drawing closer to him; “but I really felt so curious to see these English horsemen’s performance that I asked Lionel to train Alice for me.”

“And Lionel, of course, but too happy to show his pretty sister – ”

“Nay, nay, if you will quiz, I must only confess that my head is quite turned already; our noble cousin overwhelms me with flatteries which, upon the principle the Indian accepts glass beads and spangles as gems, and gold, I take as real value. But here he comes.”

And Lord Netherby, attired for the field in all the accuracy of costume, slipped towards them. After came Colonel Crofton, a well-known fashionable of the clubs and a hanger-on of the peer; then Sir Harry Beauclerk, a young baronet of vast fortune, gay, good-tempered, and extravagant; while several others of lesser note, brother officers of Lionel’s and men about town, brought up the rear, one only deserving remark, a certain Captain, or, as he was better known, Tom Nolan, – a strange, ambiguous kind of fellow, always seen in the world, constantly met at the best houses, and yet nobody being able to explain why he was asked, nor – as it very often happened – who asked him.

Lady Eleanor never appeared early in the day, but there was a sprinkling of lady-visitors through the room, guests at the abbey: a very pretty, but not over-afflicted widow, a Mrs. Somerville, with several Mrs. and Miss Lynches, Brownes, and Martins, comprising the beauties of the neighborhood. Lionel was the last to make his appearance, so many directions had he to give about earth-stoppers and cover-hacks, drags, phaetons, fresh horses, and all the contingent requirements of a day’s sport. Besides, he had pledged himself most faithfully to give Mrs. Somerville’s horse, a very magnificent barb, a training canter himself, with a horse-sheet round his legs, for she was a timid rider, – on some occasions, – though certain calumnious people averred that, when alone, she would take any fence in the whole barony.

At length they were seated, and such a merry, happy party! There was but one sad heart in the company, and that none could guess at. And what a running fire of pleasant raillery rattled round the table! How brimful of wit and good-humor were they all! How ready each to take the jest against himself, and even heighten its flavor by some new touch of drollery. Harmless wagers respecting the places they would occupy at the finish, gentle quiz-zings about safe riding through the gaps, and joking counsels as to the peculiar difficulties of an Irish country, were heard on all sides; while the Knight recounted the Galway anecdote of Dick Perse taking an immense leap and disappearing afterwards. “‘Call the ground, Dick!’ cried Lord Clanricarde, who was charging up at top speed – ‘call the ground! What’s at the other side?’

“‘I am, thank God!’ was the short reply, and the words came from the depth of a gravel-pit.”

At last, venison pasties and steaks, rolls and coffee, with their due accompaniment of liqueurs, came to an end, and a very sufficient uproar without, of men, dogs, and horses commingled, bespoke the activity of preparation there, while old Bob Carney’s voice topped every other, as he swore at or commended men and beasts indiscriminately.

“What a glorious morning for our sport!” said the Knight, as he threw open the sash, and let into the room the heavy perfume of the earth, borne on a southerly wind. The sea was calm as an inland lake, and the dark clouds over it were equally motionless. “We shall be unlucky, my Lord, if we do not show you some sport on such a day. Ah, there go the dogs!” And, as he spoke, the hounds issued from beneath the deep arch of the gateway, and with Bob and the whipper-in at their head, took their way across the lawn.

“To horse! to horse!” shouted Lionel, gayly, from the courtyard, for the riding party were not to proceed to the cover by the short path the hounds were gone, but to follow by a more picturesque and circuitous route.

“I hope sincerely that beast is not intended for me,” said Lord Netherby, as a powerful black horse crossed the courtyard, in a series of bounds, and finished by landing the groom over his head.

“Never fear, my Lord,” said Lionel, laughing; “Billy Pitt is meant for Beauclerk.”

“You surely never named that animal after the minister, Knight?” said his Lordship.

“Yes, my Lord,” said Darcy, with a smile; “it’s just as unsafe to back one as the other. But here comes the heavy brigade. Which is your choice, – Black Peter, or Mouse?”

“If I may choose, I will confess this is more to my liking than anything I have seen yet. You know that I don’t mean to take any part in the debate, so I may as well secure a quiet seat under the gallery. But, my dear Miss Darcy, what a mettlesome thing you ‘ve got there!”

“She’s only fidgety; if I can hold her when they throw off, I ‘ll have no trouble afterwards.” And the graceful girl sat back easily in her saddle as the animal bounded and swerved with every stroke of her long riding-habit.

“There goes Beauclerk!” cried Lionel, as the young baronet shot like an arrow through the archway on the back of Billy Pitt; for no sooner had he touched the saddle than the unmanageable animal broke away from the groom’s hands, and set off at full speed down the lawn.

“I say, Darcy,” cried Colonel Crofton, “is n’t Beauclerk a step over you in the ‘Army List’?”

But Lionel never heard the question, for he was most busily occupied about Mrs. Somerville and her horse.

“Who drives the phaeton? – where’s a safe whip to be found for Mrs. Martin?” said the Knight; and, seizing on a young Guardsman, he promoted him to the box, with a very pretty girl beside him. A drag, with four grays, was filling at the same instant, with a mixed population of horsemen and spectators, among whom Captain Nolan seemed the presiding spirit, as, seated beside a brother officer of Lionel’s on the box, he introduced the several parties to each other, and did “the honors” of the conveyance.

Troops of horses, sheeted and hooded, now passed out with a number of grooms and stable-boys, on their way to cover; and at last the great cavalcade moved forward, the Knight, his daughter, and Lord Netherby gayly cantering on the grass, to permit the carriages to take the road. The drag came last; and although but newly met, the company were already in the full enjoyment of that intimacy which high spirits and pleasure beget, while Tom Nolan contributed his utmost to the merriment by jests which lost nothing of their poignancy from any scruples of their maker.

“There they go at last,” said he, as Lionel and Mrs. Somerville cantered forth, followed by two grooms. “I never heard of a stirrup so hard to arrange as that, in all my life!”