CHAP. IX.

WHEN captain Beresford reached his lodging after the agitating interview with his uncle, his thoughts and feelings were all bewildered. He had not seen his cousin Elizabeth, because, from the precarious state of her health, it was as necessary to prepare her against the inroads of joy as against the inroads of sorrow. The slightest excitement might sever the thread already spun so thin; she might steal from life, in the very moment, life, like the ark-dove, was freighted with the laurel sprig of promise-she might dis solve, and melt away into spirit, ere the charm of intercourse had twined flowers around the genial stem of consanguinity. Yet though he had not met the living breathing Elizabeth, he had gazed upon her scarce less-breathing semblance; her

form,

form, her features, perpetuated on the car vass, and bearing record to the calm and lovely mind of the fair original. For a long, long space, he had studied the portrait of his cousin ere he quitted the Waterloo-road; and in his mental musings, he still bore the kindly smile, the liquid eyes, which, like Campbell's Gertrude,

"Seem'd to love whate'er they look'd upon;"

and the drooping and the withering of a flower so sweet and so fair, cast mildew on his spirits." She must be very beautiful—she must be very amiable,” he mused, as he passed M'Dermot in the passage, and mounted to the drawing-room. All there was lone and still; the fire burning to embers: the faint and sickly ray, flashing, and dying, and serving, in the comprehensive language of the poet, to "make darkness visible." Major D'Arcy was from home, and there was no one to whom he could unlock the pent-up feel

ings of his bosom; he cast himself on the sofa, and when M'Dermot entered with lights, he looked up with a nervous start.

M'Dermot stoked the fire, and swept the hearth, and loitered seemingly busying himself with the ornaments on the mantel-shelf, but in simple truth, awaiting some observation from his master."Your honour," said Terence, turning abruptly round, and placing one hand upon the back of a chair, "I have been after thinking, 'tis pity, his honour the admiral should have come for to tack a query at the fag-end of his letter, and to send it all the weary long way from Devonshire to London, just to pother people's brains, and set people's wits puzzlin and guessin, and guessin and puzzlin, and mayhap at last clutchin the wrong sow by the ear. Och! and I would give a raal golden guinea-and I am not overburdened with many raal golden guineas, God help me!-jist to guiss why little Rachel Page has grown all over so for

getful,

getful, and why Miss Rhoda should look waggish when she asked of one Terence McDermot."

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Sure, you may guess, without waging the golden guinea," said Beresford, smiling.

"As how, your honour?" quick interrogated M'Dermot. "Sorrow a thing else can I think of. By St. Patrick, it clings as tight to me, as a sot clings to his bottle. I would journey, with paase in my shoes, to the Elms, jist to light upon the raal cause."

"And perchance return as wise as you started," remarked Beresford.

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No, no, your honour; I could coax it all out of pretty Rachel Page, if I could but once cast anchor, as his honour the admiral says, alongside of her. Och! and it will be a blessed day's work when we start away for Devonshire. I hate this London, your honour, and I hate these Londoners; they are all so rude, and they do so quiz a body's bit of brogue, jist for all

the world, as though a man could not spake plain English, becaise he was born in his own darlin Ireland. Your honour" -and the quaint seriousness of M'Dermot's look was truly ludicrous-" I would not change my birth-cradle, with the greatest and the richest of them all: no, by St. Patrick! though their cradles be curtained with raal lace, and warmed with coverlets of silk and tinsel; and mine, it plazed God and our Lady, to pitch in a mud cabin in the very heart of the bogs of Tireragh."

"Content is a mine of wealth, is the true sunshine of the soul," observed Beresford: "without it a man cannot be happy; with it a man cannot be unhappy."

"More's the pity then 'tis so rare to meet with. Your honour," said Terence, "I have not lighted upon raal, true, downright content, since I entered London. Sorra a bit of content is there, in the rackin, and strainin, and gripin after wealth! I can but marvel, your honour, how men bother