THE FATAL BRIDE.

BEING A SECOND CONTRIBUTION FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF A BACHELOR.

Published in Dublin University Magazine, 1848

I AM now an old man, and, what is perhaps less excusable, an old bachelor too; and yet, sir, I am not a bachelor of malice prepense — I am no profane railer against wedlock. I would not, for my grandmother’s enamel bonbonniere, which catches my eye this moment, nor for my honoured uncle’s silver-mounted and inlaid steel barrels — both of them family reliques dear in their own several ways — that your fair readers should set me down as guilty of premeditated and deliberate celibacy. No such thing. I have more than once narrowly escaped — I should say missed — the fate-matrimonial, and that by pure accident — by no cowardice or perfidy of mine. No; my tendencies were all conjugal — my blessedness, however, has been single; and so far am I from thanking my stars, or taking merit to myself for this state of things, that, sooth to say, even the seventy-and-five winters and summers that have bleached and baked me in succession, still find me, now and then, sighing over the tender recollections and bitter disappointments, which arc now for me, the sad and only reliques of the romance of early days.

But though I have had my passages of love, as well as those of the sterner passions, in my day; and though I sometimes take a whim to rummage among old trinkets, lockets, and likenesses, each of them to me a little history in itself, yet I would not have you suppose me a superannuated sentimentalist either. No, sir. I have my tender, and, jesting aside, my melancholy retrospections; but I have also my pleasant, and, even at this time of day, my exciting recollections, too. I would be almost ashamed to tell you how often it comes to pass, that, my solitary pint of old port finished, I find myself sunk in my comfortable, ancient, leathern chair, gazing between my knees into the clear red embers, between which and me are rising and floating, like mystic shapes from an enchanted caldron, the forms and faces long lost to life, which have mingled in the mazes of early adventure; and some of whom have left upon my time-chilled heart, traces that eternity itself, mayhap, will fail to obliterate.

Thus it is, that in long winter’s evenings, as I sit alone and musing, memory calls up, with chastened colouring and softened outline, the chequered past before me. Passive, as though the pageant were the creation of some Prospero, and I his wondering visitor, I sit by and see, while memory and association crowd my vision with their filmy troops, fragments of old adventure, and glimpses of thrilling scenes, with all their actors duly accoutred, and looking just as they did — how many years ago! The light-hearted and the moody — the loved and the worthless — the prosperous and the ruined — the changed, and the dead and gone — all, in defiance of time and death, take their old places, and wear their old looks and liveries, as they drift by me in sad and wayward procession. Leaving these recollections to themselves, to rise, and shift, and unroll before my listless gaze, as chance, or some unknown law of suggestion wills it, it often happens that strange occurrences, and striking and mournful histories, which had passed from my ordinary remembrances, are thrown up again, like long-buried treasures from the restless sea, and startle me almost with the vividness of novelty.

It may be, that feeling, in most of these stories, that interest which attaches to an acquaintance with the individuals who have taken a part in them, I am unduly predisposed to exaggerate the degree of favour with which an ordinary reader may be presumed to regard them. Incidents well worth recording, as having happened to my lord or lady this, that, or t’other, may yet prove dull enough in the abstract, and unsupported by the borrowed importance of the aforesaid distinguished titles. But whatever interest I might have thrown over these pages, by particularizing individuals, and publishing real names, I feel bound — in some cases by humanity, in others by honour, but in all effectually — to forego. A chronique scandaleuse is not quite the thing for your respectable pages, nor, independently of other and higher considerations, are the tease and worry to which such authorship would expose your humble servant, quite the thing for an easy old bachelor, who has not handled a pistol in anger for full five-and-thirty years, who wishes well to all mankind, and hates trouble, almost as much as law or bloodshed.

The tales I send you, therefore, shall not record the names of those whose acts, follies, or sufferings, they recite. In all other respects they shall be faithful narratives of fact — in this alone fictitious. They may prove wondrous dull, as old men’s stories sometimes do. Of their merits, I am, for every reason, the worst possible judge. Decide, then, yourself — put them into your Magazine or into your fire, just as your critical acumen shall determine. As for me, I prize my snug obscurity too justly to aspire to literary honours, or to participate in literary resentments. Blot, burn, or print, just as you please; I have nothing of the genus irritable, except, perhaps, some symptoms of the cacoethes scribendi about me. I perceive, indeed, with complacency, that you have admitted my former contribution to a place in your November number; this has determined me to despatch another, which, with like encouragement, may be followed by a third, and so on; I, all the while, with your good leave, maintaining my incognito, and despatching my scribblings through that mysterious agency, the penny-post. Should you cease to hear from me, without sufficient apparent cause for the suspension of my correspondence; should, I say, this series — for such, with your permission, I mean to make it — be abruptly and finally cut short, why then you may conclude that the “brief candle,” in whose flickering light I ply this my self-imposed task, has at last gone out, and left your old and unknown correspondent to the darkness and repose to which time is hurrying us all.

With these few preliminary remarks, now offered once for all, I shall end the tedious task of introduction, and plunge at once into the business of my story, merely reiterating, by way of supplemental caution, that names and titles, and a few details of locality, which I fancied might indicate individuals, and lead to detection, have been suppressed and altered; but that in the substance, and, indeed, with those exceptions, in all the minor details of these narratives, I shall observe a strict adherence to the facts, as they were either related to me, or came within my own personal knowledge.

The story which I am about to relate, carries me back somewhere about half a century; at which time, it is needless to say, Dublin was, in point of society, a very different city from what it now is. It had then a resident aristocracy, and one whose equipages and housekeeping were maintained upon a scale which put plebeian competition wholly out of the question. I do not mean to offer any ungracious reflections upon the existing state of Dublin society. We have now, alas! more tuft-hunters than tufts to boast of; magnificent pretensions, based, like the Brahmin’s world, nobody can exactly say upon what, strive and strain to fill the void, which a legitimate aristocracy have left; and men, whose grandfathers — but what matters it? the thing is after all but natural. What was a metropolis, is a capital no longer; and it is but lost time sighing after the things that once were, or snarling at those that are.

At the time of which I speak, there resided in Dublin a certain worthy baronet, whom I shall call Sir Arthur Chadleigh. He was then considerably past sixty, and was a venerable monument of what was called hard living, in all its departments. He had been, until gout disabled him, a knowing gentleman on the turf; he was a deep player and a deep drinker, and covered, with an exterior of boisterous jollity, a very cold and selfish heart. He was thoroughly a man of the world, and what was then an essential ingredient in that amiable character, whenever occasion prompted, a very determined duellist. Whatever good nature he was possessed of, was expended upon society at large. In his dealings with his own family, he was arbitrary and severe; and if he did possess any natural affections he had managed to get them all admirably under control, and never was known, under any circumstances, to suffer from their over-indulgence. This old gentleman had been blessed, in his prime, with an helpmate; but Lady Chadleigh, having been, in her own way, about as domestic a person as Sir Arthur, one fine morning, at three o’clock precisely, when her spouse was entering upon his fourth bottle of claret in the parlour, absconded with young Lord Kildalkin. The happy pair were overtaken at Havre by the baronet, who, at ten paces, duly measured, shot off Kildalkin’s thumb — a feat which satisfied his honour, as some of the sterner brethren of the hair-trigger averred, at much too reasonable a rate. The worthy baronet, however, on his return, explained satisfactorily to a select circle of friends. “For,” said he, “bad I shot him through the head, I should not have known what the — to do with Lady C.” As it was, he left his wife in the hands of his rival, as a moderate equivalent for the joint.

Lady Chadleigh had not been cruel enough to leave her lord without some objects on which to exercise those domestic virtues, for which he was so justly celebrated. She had been just five years married, when she took her departure, as I have stated; and she left behind her, for the consolation of her spouse, along with an extensive assortment of macaws, avadavats, lap-dogs, and other sundries, three children — two sons and a girl. The macaws, &c., were easily disposed of, but there was no getting rid of the children; so Sir Arthur called in a grim old spinster sister, who, for fourteen years, dating from that day, presided at the baronet’s tea-table, and ruled his little flock. At the end of this period she died, and much about the same time died also the unfortunate Lady Chadleigh, forsaken and heart-broken, in some obscure town in France.

Lady Chadleigh’s name had been proscribed — in Sir Arthur’s presence none dared to mention it; and, with the exception of little Mary, the daughter who, since infancy, had never seen her, no human being appeared to feel the smallest concern about the event. Little Mary Chadleigh, however, felt it deeply; with the yearnings of unavailing affection, she had always clung to the idea, that some time or other her mother would comeback, and be fond of her. The reasons of the separation were, of course, wholly unknown to her, and her childish eagerness to learn something of her mother, had been systematically repulsed with a mysterious discouragement, in which she had come gradually to acquiesce. But though she had long learned to look upon her mother’s absence as in some way a necessary and unavoidable privation, and even as a natural thing, and a matter of course, which scarcely required to be accounted for, yet her mind had been constantly busied with the one thought, that at last she would return, and love her as she wished to be loved. And now came these strange tidings, never looked for in her childish dreams, and these black dresses, to tell her that all the little plans and hopes that had silently fluttered her innocent heart so many a time for so many years, must end for ever; that the being for whose return she had been watching and wishing ever since she could remember, was never to come again. This was a sore shock to the poor girl, and she wept, in the solitude of her chamber, over this, to her, most bitter calamity, with a vehemence of grief and a sense of desolation, which, to one unacquainted with the cherished reveries, the castlebuilding of the heart, which had been her secret happiness from earliest childhood, would have been unaccountable.

Years passed on — new objects and associations began to fill her reveries; her secret sorrow wore away, and this early grief became but a sad, and scarcely unpleasing remembrance. I was a very young man when first I  saw Miss Chadleigh, and I have seldom been so much struck by any combination of beauty, grace, and expression, as when she entered the room at one of Lady — — ‘s balls. She was at this time about nineteen, beautifully formed, and with the bearing of natural nobility; her complexion was clear, and rather pale; her eyes dark and lustrous; and her features, as I thought, exquisitely beautiful. The prevailing expression of her face was melancholy, with perhaps some slight character of haughtiness; but when she smiled, there was such a rippling of dimples, such an arch merriment in her lovely eyes, and such a revelation of little, even, pearly teeth, as made her perfectly enchanting. “ Well,” thought I, as I watched with absolute fascination the movements of this lovely being, “if beauty the most enchanting be any longer the potent influence it once was, there is no scheme of ambition to whose realization such loveliness as yours may not aspire.” How little did I dream of what was coming!

I was so much attracted — my interest and attention so irresistibly engaged, by this beautiful girl, that I  observed her, with scarcely any intermission, during the entire evening. It would be ridiculous to say that I was actually in love; I was not absurd or romantic enough (which you will) to get up a sentimental and hopeless passion at a moment’s notice, and that, too, without having exchanged one word with the object of my aspirations. No such thing. The feeling with which I  gazed on Miss Chadleigh, was one of the profoundest admiration, I admit, yet untinctured with any, the least, admixture of actual tenderness. I  observed her with the deep and silent pleasure with which beauty of the highest order may be contemplated, without the smallest danger to the heart; and, indeed, of the philosophical nature of my admiration, I had full assurance in the fact, that I remarked, with hardly one flutter of jealousy, the attentions, evidently not ill-received, which were devotedly paid her by a singularly handsome young officer, in a perfectly irresistible cavalry uniform. This gentleman was the afterwards too - celebrated Captain Jennings.

That evening remains impressed upon my memory with the vividness — what do I say? — with fifty times the vividness of yesterday. I think I see old Sir Arthur now, as he sat at the whist-table, with his crutch beside him — for gout had claimed him as its own — his fiery face and heavy brows, overcast with the profound calculations of his favourite game, and his massive frame, shaking all over with the stentorian chuckle with which he greeted the conclusion of each successful rubber, while he slyly pocketed the guineas, and rallied and quizzed his discomfited opponents, with ferocious good-humour. I looked at this old man with some curiosity. I had never seen him before, and in his past life were not a few passages of vicissitude, daring, and adventure, such as might well warrant that qualified degree of interest which, as a young man, I not unnaturally felt in him. As I observed this hero of a hundred stories in the gossip of the day — his massive, but now crippled form — his bloated face, in which few could have traced a vestige of the handsome traits which rumour assigned to his early youth, and upon which, in the intervals of his tempestuous good-humour, I thought I could clearly discover the stamp of those sterner and imperious attributes with which general report had invested him; — as I looked on this fierce, crafty, intemperate, but at the same time, strangely enough, by no means unpopular man of the world, it was impossible to avoid the trite but natural contrast which, in a thousand such cases, is forced upon the mind, as often as, turning from him, my eye rested upon his beautiful child. How could a creature so exquisitely lovely, so accomplished in every natural grace — and, if expression might be trusted, at once so refined, so noble, and so sensitive — have ever sprung from a root so gnarled, bitter, and unsightly! Yet his child she doubtless was; for the world, with all its jealous and censorious curiosity, had never once questioned the parentage of Sir Arthur’s children, and in this the world was right. For poor Lady Chadleigh had begun her married life a good and faithful wife, and under circumstances less unhappy, might have been pure and honoured to the last. But the insults of callous profligacy had alienated and exasperated a heart at once proud and impetuous. She had been a spoiled child, and became a ruined woman. Habitually ungoverned, she was incapable of forbearance. With little principle and less prudence, she suffered a restless sense of wrong to hurry her into extravagances of conduct — intended, but without effect, to pique Sir Arthur, and wound at least his pride into jealousy; and in this mad enterprise the unhappy woman had at last effectually compromised herself, and was forced to the terrible necessity of flight. Her fall was not that of an impure, but of a vengeful spirit. It vas the act of a bitter and passionate suicide, who would squander fifty lives to bring home one pang of remorse, or any other feeling, to the heart of callous indifference. Poor thing! the world understood her character, and despised her; for want of a due contempt for Sir Arthur’s apathy, and a proper acquiescence in his profligate courses, she bad given herself to ruin.

“Who is that officer,” I asked a friend, whom accident brought close to me in the crowded room— “that good-looking fellow, who has been so marked in his devotions to Miss Chadleigh all the evening?”

“Oh! that — don’t you know?” he replied. “Why that is Captain Jennings — Jennings the aid-de-camp — a devilish handsome fellow; the women are quite mad about him, and he knows it.” —

“Miss Chadleigh appears intimate with him,” I observed.

“Yes, so she is; he was a friend of young Chadleigh’s, who died, or was taken in some battle in India,” he answered.

“So, one of her brothers is dead, then?” I interrupted.

“Yes; I believe the native army made him a prisoner, and treated him in the usual way,” replied he. “I beard the particulars; they were deuced horrid; but I don’t quite recollect them now.”

“And, Miss Chadleigh — has not she a second brother?” I inquired.

“A second brother! Yes,” he answered. “A pleasant fellow; but a perfect devil for wildness. She was fond of the other brother, and in a sad way, I believe, when the news came; but that is a year and a-half since. There, now, you can see young Chadleigh — the young man going to take Miss Chadleigh away.”

He nodded to indicate the party, and I followed the direction of his eye.

Young Chadleigh was a decidedly well-looking man, with a frank and rather distinguished air, and dressed with an almost foppish attention to the prevailing fashion. I had just time to observe that he and Jennings chatted familiarly for a minute or two, and appeared to be on the friendliest terms of intimacy.

“Well,” thought I, “after all, he may be but a friend.”

Whether it be impossible to contemplate such beauty as Miss Chadleigh’s with perfect stoicism, and that, without knowing it, I was really a little jealous, I can’t say; but I certainly had watched the young captain’s attentions with a slight but disagreeable sense of restlessness, and experienced, I know not how, a certain relief in the reflection I had just made. It had, however, hardly visited my mind, when it was again disturbed.

Miss Chadleigh, leaning on her brother’s arm, was passing so close as almost to touch me, whom she had unconsciously inspired with so much admiration, when Jennings, following, presented her with her fan, accidentally forgotten. As she took it with a gracious smile, she blushed. Yes, I could not be mistaken, for a more beautiful blush I never beheld in my existence; and, to make the matter worse, I thought I perceived that, as he placed the light weapon of coquetry in her hand, his own rested upon her’s for a second longer than was strictly necessary, and in doing so conveyed the slightest possible pressure to her little ivory fingers. I felt, I know not how, disposed to be affronted and incensed, and actually stared, with no very inviting expression, full upon Captain Jennings, as he made his retreat, with a lurking smile of vanity and triumph on his lip. My ill-bred stare was unobserved, and I could, on reflection, scarcely help laughing at the absurdity of the emotion which had inspired it. But, after all, why should I? — the nature of the beast pervades us all. The presence of beauty is a woeful stimulus to unprovoked combativeness, and I do believe there is a lurking idea universally in the mind of man, that beauty should be, somehow, the prize of the fiercest and strongest — the

“Viribus editior ut in grege taurus.”

I know it was ever the case with me — I never saw, at least in my young days, a pretty girl, without feeling a disposition to fight with somebody — and this, although, under ordinary circumstances, as peaceable a fellow as any among her majesty’s liege subjects.

In pursuing this narrative, I am forced occasionally to rely upon the report of others; in some of its oddest scenes, however, as the reader will perceive, I was present, and myself a secondary actor. What I did not myself witness, I shall, as I have said, supply from the testimony of others, and thus present your readers with a connected recital of this eccentric piece of Irish biography.

If fortune had condemned Captain Jennings to the torments of love, she was, at all events, resolved to grant him every reasonable mitigation in his distressed condition. For upwards of a month, during that summer, he had the happiness of being a guest at Lord — — ‘s, where Miss Chadleigh and her brother were also visitors; whether he had succeeded, or not, in making any impression upon the young lady’s heart, was not then known; but as his attentions were, if possible, more marked and devoted than ever, the affair began to be talked of, and, soon after this visit terminated, was mentioned by a friend to Sir Arthur himself.

The baronet forthwith instituted inquiries respecting Captain Jennings’ ways and means — the result was unsatisfactory — and, one day, as the gay young gentleman eat chatting, at an early visit, with Chadleigh and his fair sister, the old baronet hobbled into the room, and set himself down as one of the party — a procedure quite contrary to his ordinary habits. There was nothing ominous in his countenance and bearing, however; on the contrary, he seemed more than usually frank and good-humoured, shook Jennings more heartily, by the hand, and laughed more boisterously at all his jokes and stories than ever he had done before. Chadleigh had already gone, and Sir Arthur having dispatched Mary to superintend some customary arrangements affecting his own comforts, the door was closed upon him and Captain Jennings.

“Jennings,” said the baronet.

Well, sir.”

“You’re a devilish good fellow — Jennings, a devilish pleasant fellow,” said the baronet, “and I’ve no doubt will get on in the world — with prudence, that is, with prudence.”

Jennings bowed his acknowledgments, and looked a little surprised.

“And, as it strikes me, Jennings, my boy,” continued the baronet, in the same jolly tone—” about the most imprudent thing you could possibly do, at the outset, would be to marry; and marriage being out of the question in point of prudence — totally and entirely out of the question — I should not, you understand me, like to have Miss Chadleigh, my daughter, talked of in connexion with such an absurdity.”

“Really, Sir Arthur,” interrupted Jennings, changing colour slightly, and affecting a cool hauteur, which he was far from feeling—” I don’t precisely know to what particular circumstances you are pleased to allude.”

“Come, come, my dear fellow,” said Sir Arthur, in the same tone of rough good humour, which, in all his dealings, alike with friend or foe, whether with the dice-box or the pistol, he had ever maintained— “we are, both of us, men of the world — eh? I an old, and you a young one; but both of us unquestionably men of the world, and perfectly wide awake. You know just as well as I, and I as well as you, what is usually termed, paying attentions to a young lady — let us have no shamming at either side — we both of us know this; and I don’t approve of Miss Chadleigh’s receiving any such distinction from you, my dear Jennings; and now I hope I have made myself perfectly intelligible.”

Jennings bowed stiffly, and the baronet continued —

“A set of meddling old women have begun to talk, you see, and I took this, the earliest opportunity, of putting you on your guard — for, of course, it would not answer your cards either, to have such nonsense put about, and so, without anything abrupt or remarkable, your acquaintance must become cooler, and — and — more distant; and, in short, when you do happen to meet in society, the less you are thrown together, the better; in a word, my dear Jennings, your coolness must effectually give the lie to this ridiculous piece of gossip.”

As Sir Arthur concluded, he was slowly rising from his seat, and having, just at its termination, established his ponderous and gouty person in an erect position, he took Jennings’ hands in both his, and shaking them very cordially, said, in precisely the tone which might have conveyed a hospitable and pressing invitation —

“And, by the way, my dear Jennings, I think it would be very advisable, don’t you, by way of a beginning, to put an immediate stop to these little visits — these foolish little morning calls, which make people talk, and serve no possible purpose, as matters stand, except as a very unnecessary tax upon your time; so, for the future” — here he renewed the shaking, with increasing warmth—” when we do meet, let it be abroad, my dear Jennings, and not here; you understand me, not on any account here; in society, of course, I shall always be delighted to meet you; we shall there, of course, be the best possible friends; and now, my dear Jennings, I think we perfectly understand one another, and I’ll not waste any more of your time, for, of course, you have many more amusing ways of employing it. Good morning, Jennings, my boy — farewell.”

The perfect radiation of cordiality and good humour with which this very peremptory dismissal was conveyed, was so incongruously disconcerting, that Jennings felt totally unable to resent the procedure as he felt disposed to do — for, truth to say, he was more nettled than he cared to confess, even to himself. Returning the old gentleman’s salutation, therefore, stiffly and coldly enough, he withdrew, and had walked nearly half-way along the side of St. Stephen’s-green (in the immediate neighbourhood of which Sir Arthur resided) before he began to recover the angry confusion of this affronting congé. Slackening his pace, however, be began to revolve the occurrences in his mind, and, with the resignation of necessity, began to discover many things to be grateful for among the consequences of this explanation, brusque and unexpected as it undoubtedly was.

“Well, well,” he muttered, “it is, perhaps, much better as it is. She is a devilish fine girl, to be sure, and, I do believe, had well nigh turned my head; but, egad, I was acting like a fool — a — fool, to follow her about, and get myself entangled at all — heaven knows what an infernal piece of mischief it might have ended in, if I had been left to my own foolish fancies —

I’m a deuced deal a happier man, as matters stand — a safer one, at all events.”

Jennings was a singularly handsome young man, as we have said — very vain and very selfish; he knew no control except that involved in a punctilious subservience to the code of fashionable society in which he lived; and, without any one grain of positive malevolence in his disposition, he had about him a great deal of the raw material out of which circumstances and opportunity might eventually fabricate a villain; an inconsiderate impetuosity, too often mistaken for generosity and impulsive candour; an exacting and ambitious vanity, which, ever seeking for new homage, inspired a constant desire to please — and, with the desire, stimulated the constant practice, too, of all the little arts of pleasing — and which, however despicable a passion in itself, was yet, in its effects, the prime cause of his popularity — these, combined with a constitutional selfishness which instinctively governed all his views and actions, were the leading attributes of a character — unfortunately for the dignity of human nature — commonplace enough. Externally, however, he was a very fascinating person — accomplished, elegant, agreeable, and blessed with an inexhaustible flow of gay and sparkling spirits.

Of course, it was to be presumed that Sir Arthur had conveyed to Miss Chadleigh his views respecting Jennings’ attentions; and the baronet’s stern and implacable severity in punishing disobedience, and enforcing compliance with his commands, was so thoroughly known and understood, that not one of his children dared openly to disobey his lightest order. Mary Chadleigh and Jennings, however, were destined often to meet — indeed it could not be otherwise, unless one or other of them had withdrawn from that gay society in which both of them mixed so freely. There was, however, a very marked change in their mutual demeanour. There was an obvious reserve on her part; though ill-natured people observed that her eyes were oftener seen following his movements in the crowded saloons than was either to be accounted for by pure accident, or altogether reconcilable with the show of coldness with which she now habitually met him. On his part, the change was also marked; instead of devoting his attentions and his time, as heretofore, whenever fortune brought them together, all but exclusively to her, he now scarcely ever exchanged a dozen sentences with her; in short, though the female world good-naturedly persisted in believing Miss Chadleigh a very ill-used, and, spite of her assumed indifference, a very devoted damsel — yet all were agreed that this affair was totally and finally at an end.

It was not very long until gossip began to busy itself once more with this young lady’s name — a new suitor began to be suspected. Young Lord Dungarret, with a coronet and twelve thousand a year at his disposal, was evidently smitten, and to such a degree, that Miss Chadleigh became ten degrees more ugly than ever in the eyes of the female world of Dublin. While matters were in this state, however, it happened that one day, as Sir Arthur sate in his chamber, damning his old enemy, the gout, in solitary suffering and ill-temper, somebody hesitatingly knocked at his chamber door.

“Come in — well?” he exclaimed, turning his mottled and gloomy visage full on the intruder.

The person who entered was old Martha, a privileged domestic of some three-score years, who had been the nurse, and was now the attendant of Mary Chadleigh, whom she absolutely idolized. “I’m come, sir, about the young mistress,” she said, approaching; “for, indeed, I’m afraid she’s very bad — she’s very sick, sir, and I would not be easy without the doctor seeing her.”

“Sick — is she?” said the baronet; “ young ladies are always ailing — it’s interesting, and nurses always croaking — they have nothing else to do; I wish she had half-a-day’s experience of my gout — curse it — and she’d know what pain is like.”

“Why, then, indeed, sir, she really is bad, and very bad, I’m afraid, this time,” said the woman, with dignified emphasis. “It is not, of course, for an old woman like me, that’s nothing to the darling young lady, more than just nursing her and taking care of her, to be dictating to her own father, that, of course, has more feeling for his own child than the likes of me ‘id have; but all I say is, she is really bad, and—”

“Well, well, well — send for the doctor, to be sure, and don’t plague me any more; and just tell him,” he added, as the old woman reached the door, “if he finds anything seriously amiss, that I will feel much obliged by his looking in here, and telling me what he thinks of her — do you hear?”

In obedience to the summons, accordingly dispatched, Dr. Robertson, as I shall call him, then in extensive practice in Dublin, and who had been for twenty years the physician in attendance upon the family, arrived late in the evening. He was a large, good-natured man, with a rough voice, emphatic delivery, and a brusque and decisive manner — clear-headed and rapid — with a thorough knowledge of the world, as well as a consummate skill in his profession. With a very rough exterior, and an occasional coarseness, and even severity of expression, Dr. Robertson was, nevertheless, a kind and tender-hearted man; and these sterling qualities had served to secure him a vested interest in the practice to which his reputation had once introduced him.

It was, as I have said, late in the evening, when a peremptory double knock at the door announced the arrival of the physician. With brisk and creaking steps he followed the servant, who conducted him directly to the young lady’s chamber. The house was a vast and handsome mansion; and after ascending a stone staircase, and passing a handsome lobby, he found himself in a kind of antechamber, from which the young lady’s sleeping apartment opened. Here he remained for a moment, while old Martha went in to prepare her young mistress for the visit. After about a minute, she returned, and intimated that Miss Chadleigh was ready.

Doctor Robertson accordingly entered. The young lady was lying upon her bed, her face deadly pale, except where two bright spots of hectic crimson glowed with unnatural warmth; her eyes were swollen with tears, and as the physician approached, she turned away from his well-known, good-natured countenance, and hid her face in the bedclothes.

“Well, well, ray dear, what is all this? Come, come, we’ll make a cure of you in no time — don’t fret — we’ll here you well in a day or two.”

Thus saying, in rough and kindly tones, he took her hand, and as he felt her pulse, continued —

“And tell me where you feel amiss — there’s a good child — don’t sob — don’t cry — I promise you it won’t signify.”

“Oh, doctor,” she said, with her face still averted, “ I am very ill, and — and — in such wretched spirits.”

Here the poor girl again burst into tears; and while she was weeping, the old nurse stole noiselessly out of the chamber, and closing the door, walked restlessly from one spot to another in the outer room we have described; now arranging a screen, now replacing a chair by the wall, now stirring the fire, but, with an abstracted and miserable look, and wringing her withered hands ever and anon in the intervals. This had gone on with little variation, except that the old woman occasionally looked with an expression of intense anxiety, and even horror, at the door which concealed her young mistress and her professional visitor from view, when at last it opened, and Doctor Robertson came out, buried, as it seemed, in profound and painful thought, and looking unusually pale and agitated; he walked, by two or three steps at a time, pausing, and occasionally shaking his head gloomily in the intervals, and sate himself down in silence before the fire, and ruminated for some minutes. At last he stood up briskly, turned his hack to the fire, beckoned to the old woman, and as she approached, raised the candle, so that its light fell full upon her face.

“Where do you sleep, Martha?” he asked, abruptly.

“Where — where do I sleep?” she echoed, stammeringly.

“Ay, ma’am, where?” he repeated, sternly.

“Why — why here, sir, here in this room,” she answered, with some confusion.

He fixed his eyes upon her sharply for a few seconds, and then as abruptly said —

“And how does your mistress rest at night, pray?”

“She rests — she rests — why, sir, she rests pretty well, sir; but why do you ask me?”

He continued to regard the old woman with the same steady scrutiny for some seconds; at last she said, with an affronted air, and rather an effort, for she was, whatever the cause might be, very much disconcerted —

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir, what you’re looking at me that way for; a body ‘id think I was took for a thief.”

“There — there — never mind,” he said, putting down the candle; “no offence, nurse, no offence — go in to your young mistress. Is there — ay, there’s pen and ink here — very well — just go in, and I’ll call you when I want you.”

Accordingly, the old woman, muttering and sniffing, hobbled into the adjoining room, and closed the door, unaccountably, as it seemed, both irritated and alarmed.

Doctor Robertson being left alone, leaned, in deep reflection, for a minute or two upon the mantel-piece; he then glanced round the room, and observing another door in it, he walked over, opened it, and looked out. It commanded a landing-place upon a back staircase.

“Ha!” said he, as he closed the door, and returned to the fireplace, whistling slowly, and with rather a dismal countenance, a few interrupted staves as he went, he sat down, and after a brief pause exclaimed—” Poor thing! — poor thing! — it must not rest here. Dear me — dear me — how very strange — I must see her again — humph! — perplexing, — but — ay, ay — I’ll see her again — it is much better.”

So saying, he called Martha, gave her some general directions about preparing slops, &c., and telling her to attend to these arrangements meanwhile, he once more entered his patient’s chamber.

It was fully half-an-hour afterwards, that Dr. Robertson knocked at Sir Arthur Chadleigh’s door.

“Poor little thing!” said he, after a few introductory sentences, exchanged at either side, “she is seriously indisposed, feverish, and very nervous, and, I fear, without an immediate prospect of complete recovery. The best thing to be done for her is, to keep her from all excitement and agitation; her hours must be early, and the fewer visitors she sees the better. In short, I have spoken to her very fully; she is now in possession of my opinion, and appears perfectly disposed to follow my directions implicitly, so there is little else to be done for the present, than to permit her to do as she herself shall desire. In the meantime, I will look in from time to time, to see that all goes on well.”

And pray, Doctor Robertson, how soon may we expect her perfect restoration to health,” said Sir Arthur, and with a coarse chuckle he added, “for egad, if a girl is to marry at all, it won’t do to have her locked up long — there’s no time like the present, my dear sir, especially in the case of youth and good looks.”

“True, Sir Arthur; very true,” said the medical man; “but, in Miss Chadleigh’s case, it would not be safe to undertake her recovery within any limited time — she may possibly be well in a few weeks, and possibly not for a year; it is impossible to predict with certainty; it is one of those doubtful cases, which may go on for a very long time, and which, at the same time, may just as possibly take a good or an ill turn within a fortnight.”

“It’s cursed provoking — the dear child!” ejaculated Sir Arthur, petulantly, as he thought of Lord Dungarret and his twelve thousand a-year—” what do you say to a week or so in the country?”

“Umph! I proposed that; but she did not like it,” said Doctor Robertson; “and her disliking it would make the experiment mischievous instead of useful: her nerves are as much affected as her general health; so that we must not contradict her fancies, or irritate her on any account; she must be allowed to choose for herself — except in matters of essential importance; and in those she has good sense enough to defer implicitly to her medical adviser; so I shall look in, from time to time, and see that matters go on properly, and report progress to you accordingly.”

With these words he took his leave. As Doctor Robertson was in large and fashionable practice, Miss Chadleigh’s illness was soon generally known; some said it was merely a ruse to complete the reduction of Lord Dungarret; others, that she was broken-hearted for love of the faithless Captain Jennings; many pitied her, and some few sincerely lamented her absence.

I recollect, about this time, strolling into the theatre one evening with two or three acquaintances. We took our places in the back of a box, in the next one to which I observed Jennings. One of my party happened to be acquainted with him, and the following conversation passed between them — a conversation which indirectly threw a light upon some of the darkest passages of his subsequent history —

“I say, Jennings, did you hear the news about the Chadleighs?”

“No — what news?” he inquired, quickly.

“Why, young Chadleigh told me, not an hour since, a letter has come from his brother Dick, whom we all thought was killed and cut up in India; but far from it, he is perfectly well, and returning home on leave.”

“Good God I how extraordinary! — I really am delighted to hear it!” exclaimed Jennings, growing pale, nevertheless, and looking stunned and alarmed, instead of overjoyed, as his words implied.

“He has quite a tale of wonders to tell about his escapes and all that,” continued his informant; and so rattled on for a time, until, the curtain rising, he directed his attention to the stage.

Though Jennings immediately recovered his serenity of countenance, he grew silent, and in a few minutes withdrew from the theatre, leaving, in my mind at least, impressions not very favourable to the strength of his affections or the value of his friendship. I did not then know the positive reasons which he had for dreading his young friend’s return.

Time wore on — months passed away — still Doctor Robertson responded, with gloomy uncertainty, to the inquiries with which he was assailed from all sides; and the general impression began to be, that poor Miss Chadleigh’s recovery was becoming at least a very doubtful contingency. Such was the posture of affairs, when your humble servant, who pens these pages, was himself involved in an adventure which it is necessary here to detail.

I had left a pleasant party, somewhere about one o’clock at night, and, without having positively transgressed the limits of sobriety, I had taken just wine enough to predispose me to embark in any exciting enterprise which might turn up. I was quite alone; and, as the reader is probably aware, the streets of Dublin were by no means so safe at night-time in the period of which I speak, as they now are; but relying upon the sword, which the fashion of those days made a necessary appendage, and in whose use I was a tolerably accomplished proficient, I rather courted than avoided such adventures as chance might possibly present. And in this spirit, instead of pursuing the open streets, I threaded the narrow alleys and back lanes with a careless sort of swagger, and a pugnacious disposition, the very remembrance of which, even at this time of day, makes me blush for the reckless folly of my youth. The perversity of fortune was, however, in this instance, as in many others, apparent — silence and solitude encountered my advance. I was now just entering, in my devious ramble, a dingy stable-lane, whose entire length was enlivened by but three twinkling oil-lamps, whose dusky radiance scarcely extended a yard around the wooden posts that supported them. This dismal and silent alley ran immediately behind the west-side of St. Stephen’s green; and I observed the figure of a man walking up and down, as it seemed to me, with cautious and suspicious tread. I could perceive nothing of him, however, in the dusky light, except that, as he passed and repassed immediately under one of the lamps, its faint rays fell upon a broad-brimmed hat, and a great-coat, in which the figure was enveloped. My vague suspicions were confirmed, by observing that this man withdrew himself, with cautious haste, as I advanced, and was soon lost to my sight. I was standing, still looking in the direction in which the figure bad disappeared, when a little wicket, in one of the gates opening upon the lane, was drawn hack close to where I stood, and a suppressed female voice inquired —

“Are you there?”

“Yes,” answered I, promptly; now, for the first time, beginning to feel that an adventure was coming, and inclined to bear my part in it to the close, end how it might.

“Where?” repeated the voice.

“Here,” I answered, approaching the aperture.

A female, muffled in a cloak and bonnet, was passing through the wicket, and making me a sign to draw nearer, she said, hurriedly, “Here — take it — and then wait for us where you are.”

At the same time she placed a small bundle in my hands, which I received, nothing doubting that I was innocently made a partner in some night robbery, whose true accomplice was the man whom I had seen walking to-and-fro, as I described, and for whom, doubtless, the woman had mistaken me. With a secret satisfaction at the surprise I was about to give the party, I held the parcel fast, and took a few turns, up and down, before the spot where I had received it, awaiting the further progress of the affair.

While thus engaged, I was nearly met, face to face, by the man whom I had at first seen, and who, hearing some noise, doubtless, at the appointed place of rendezvous, had hurried back. On descrying me, however, he instantly retired as before; and I, fearing to interrupt the current of the adventure, forbore in anywise to obstruct his escape. I had walked thus back and forward, bundle in hand, for eight or ten minutes, when the wicket was opened once more, and the woman I had spoken to already, stepped out into the lane, and said —

“Stand back a little bit, an’ follow us, and don’t for the life of you drop that.”

Almost at the same time two other figures came forth, muffled as carefully as the first, and I heard a female voice from within the wicket, pouring forth, as it seemed to me, prayers and blessings, interrupted with sobs. The door was cautiously closed from the inside, and I heard the key slowly and carefully turned in the rusty lock; and as these sounds were audible, the little party began to move forward, while I, in obedience to orders, brought up the rear, carrying the parcel carefully in my arms.

The person in the centre of the three appeared to be feeble, and to advance with pain, and as she did so, leaned heavily upon the others.

Thus we proceeded, until we reached the end of this lane, and turned into another as solitary and ill-lighted. As the party before me passed under the lamp at the corner, one of the women upon whom she in the middle was leaning, exclaimed —

“Give me them, my jewel; they are better off where we are going.”

And thus saying, she drew off two or three rings that glittered upon the fingers that pressed her arm, and slipped them into her pocket. This done, they relapsed into total silence, and, full of curiosity for the issue, I followed close upon their steps.

We had now walked, though very slowly, for nearly ten minutes, when, in a dark spot, close under a broad gateway, they stopped.

“Thank God, we are so far,” said one of the women; “sit down on that, my darling, for a minute and so saying, she laid a shawl, which she folded up in the fashion of a cushion, upon the top of one of the short upright stones which protected the corners of the piers; and upon this rude seat, the silent, and, as it seemed, exhausted figure, sank down. The woman who had just accosted me, now beckoned me to her, and taking the bundle from me, said: —

“Now run down there, and bring up a chair from the stand at the second corner.”

She indicated the direction with her hand, and I — exerting myself to the full, as much as if I had had a personal stake in the enterprise, in which I thus found myself, through sheer wantonness, actively involved — ran at my utmost speed upon the errand, and quickly returned with the desired conveyance.

Into this, the feeble woman who had been resting as I have described, was hurried, and the chairmen having received directions to follow the two others, and I in turn to follow them, we all trudged onward, for forty minutes and upwards, in absolute silence.

By that time we had penetrated considerably beyond Werburgh-street, and were now entering the Liberties, when turning abruptly into a short, dark, dilapidated street, the women stopped in front of a tall, dingy house, and after inspecting its exterior and interchanging a few words, they signed to the chairmen to set down their conveyance. Some one had probably been watching for its arrival, from one of the many dark windows which overlooked the street, for she who had sate in it was hardly disengaged from the chair, when the hall-door was stealthily opened, and a grimy, suspicious-looking girl, with a wretched candle in one hand, and shading her eyes with the other, peeped out.

“Give me that,” said the woman who had spoken to me, and who seemed to have the command of the expedition, at the same time entering, and taking the candle from her, while she drew the door fully open.

“All right?” she added, inquiringly, glancing significantly upwards.

“Ay, everything,” rejoined the other, sleepily; at the same time the other two women entered and passed silently on toward the stairs.

“Pay the men, now, and come in yourself,” added the same woman, addressing me. I fortunately had about me enough change to satisfy the chairmen, which, as it seemed it was my province to do, and having dismissed them, I followed my conductress into the house, and surrendered the bundle into her hands.

She turned the key in the hall-door, and beckoned me into a dilapidated wainscotted back-room, on the window-sill of which she placed the dipt candle, which faintly lighted this inhospitable apartment, and pointing to the only piece of furniture which garnished its walls, a solitary, clumsy chair, placed there, I suppose, in anticipation of my arrival, she said —

“Wait there, my good man, till I come back by-and-bye, and you know the rest.”

As she spoke to me, I for the first time saw her countenance, which was about as ugly and sinister a one as I had ever beheld; very nearly resembling the lineaments usually ascribed in fairy tales, and other such authentic records, to witches of the malignant kind; a yellow skin, hooked nose, a wide mouth, with a few carious fangs, and a marvellous prominence of chin, gave additional effect to a pair of eyes, whose fierce and rat-like vivacity seemed scarcely reconcilable with the evident antiquity of her other features; and though her head was somewhat sunk upon her chest, yet her original wiry activity seemed to have suffered little abatement from years. This woman’s countenance, I confess, impressed me most unfavourably with respect to the object of these arrangements; and I could not help entertaining a vague and unpleasant suspicion of meditated foul-play, and impending mischief as the glance of this ill-favoured hag continued to haunt my fancy long after she had left me to the dreary solitude of the apartment. There was something, perhaps, a little wounding to the self-love of a young man in being thus coolly set down, as I clearly was, for a lackey; but this I must do myself the justice to say, that I was buttoned up in a great coat fashioned more with a view to comfort than to elegance; and provided with a hat which had seen a great deal of rough night-duty.

The interest I felt in the denouement of the adventure, however, prevented my troubling myself much about this; and seating myself, pursuant to the old woman’s directions, in the solitary chair, I was left alone to keep watch in this singularly bleak and comfortless apartment.

Insensibly I began to grow sleepy; and, adjusting myself in as easy an attitude as my uncomfortable position would permit, I fell into an uneasy dose, in which the ill-looking hag, who had last left me, was in my sleeping fancy, hovering about me, and offering me share of the rings I had seen her take, on condition of my being accessary to some infernal crime, which she was always on the point of confiding to me, yet, somehow or other, never divulged, when I was startled from my dreams by a piercing cry. For a moment I forgot where I was; the sound was still ringing in my ears, and the candle, the snuff of which out-topped its blaze, afforded but an imperfect and shadowy light. Full of uneasy apprehensions, I walked softly into the hall, and made my way to the foot of the stairs, where I stood, listening breathlessly for the slightest sound of a human voice, but in vain. I thought, indeed, I could distinguish in some remote upper-room the shuffling of feet, but of this I could not, on account of the constant rattling of the old window-frames in the wind, be perfectly certain. After waiting for a considerable time, I was shout to abandon my new position, or to return to my post in the parlour, when I once more distinctly heard the same piercing cry of agony which had at first startled me. Without one moment’s hesitation, I drew my sword, strode by three-at-a-time up the stairs, the cries continuing as I ascended; and just as I reached the room from which they were issuing, they subsided into a moan, and I heard the tread of steps as before. I rushed directly to the door, sword in hand, and pushing it open, was some paces towards the centre of the chamber before I could arrest my advance. I bad good reason to be astounded. A fire was lighted, and several wax-candles were burning in the room, and illuminated abundance of furniture, somewhat dingy to be sure, but still, as it struck me, comfortable and respectable in appearance; there were curtains carefully drawn across the windows, a carpet on the floor, and a large bed, at one side of which stood, the one a little in advance of the other, the two women I had accompanied, now divested of their bonnets and cloaks; at the other, Doctor Robertson; and in the bed itself, flushed, exhausted, and as it seemed to me, well nigh dying — heavens! could I believe it — Miss Chadleigh herself.

I stood for several moments absolutely petrified with amazement; and those upon whose offices I had thus unexpectedly intruded, in so warlike an attitude, returned my look with a gaze of scarcely less astonishment than mine. The poor young lady, who lay quite motionless, with her eyes just closed, appeared, however, wholly unconscious of the intrusion. Before I had recovered sufficiently from the stupefaction of this extraordinary discovery, Doctor Robertson had taken me roughly by the collar, and drew me, or rather pushed me out of the apartment.

In reply to his angry interrogatories, which he had suppressed until I had reached the lobby, I offered the best explanation, namely, the simple truth.

“Robbers, indeed!” he muttered—” more likely to be one of the gang yourself—”

And calling out one of the women, and having exchanged a few words in a whisper with her, I presume touching myself, he appeared satisfied, and told me to get down again as fast as I could, and to beware how I came again where I was not wanted. Sustaining as well as I could the character assigned me, as it were, by common consent, I conducted myself under this rebuke, as a respectful lackey might be supposed to do. I was so much shocked, that on reaching the chamber where I had been directed to wait, I could scarcely collect my thoughts. Only to think of Miss Chadleigh’s being reduced to a situation so strange and deplorable! — she whom I had last seen the admired of all beholders — the life and the ornament of the gay and elegant society in which she moved. Merciful heaven I how repulsive, degrading, and melancholy was the contrast. A prey to a thousand conflicting and tumultuous feelings, I leaned upon the old chimney-piece, gazing into the black and empty grate, lost, not in conjecture or surmise, but in mere confusion, amazement, and, I might almost add, consternation.

While thus engaged, I was tapped on the shoulder by the old woman, whose entrance I had not perceived.

“Poor young lady!” said I— “how is she now?”

“Bad enough,” said the woman— “don’t your hear her?”

“Poor thing I she seems very ill, indeed!” I answered.

“Ay, ay,” she repeated, with a smile, for which I could have strangled her, “it’s all one, rich or poor, on that bed. She’s in the hands of God now, an’ nothing but Him and patience to look to—”

“God help her — God help her!” I repeated.

“Och, never a fear of her,” said she, snuffing the candle with her bony fingers; and then putting her hand in her pocket, she gave me a note, saying —

“You’re to bring that to him the minute the child’s born; and mind, you’re to tell him — for the foolish creature set her heart on it — that she wrote it the very last minute she could hold a pen, do you mind? and don’t go until I come back and tell you whether it’s a boy or a girl; though, God knows, I don’t see much differ it makes.”

With this remark she withdrew, and I, with intense curiosity, approached the candle to read the address of the billet. “Richard Hamilton Jennings, Esq.,” was written with a trembling hand upon it, and, fortunately for my incognito, his address in full subscribed. I now began, for the first time, fully to appreciate the extreme awkwardness and embarrassment of the very equivocal position into which my precipitate folly had led me. I had become possessed of a secret, involving the reputations, perhaps the lives of others, and by a coincidence which, however purely accidental and unpremeditated upon my part, I yet could not help perceiving might, at the same time, expose me to the most painful and disreputable surmises and misconstruction. It was, however, too late now to extricate myself, without possibly doing still further mischief; my now withdrawing could effect no possible good; and, on the whole, I judged it best to perform the services committed to the domestic whose place I had so foolishly taken, and then to confide in Doctor Robertson (whose character, as well as his appearance, I perfectly knew, although I had no actual acquaintance with himself), the exact nature of my position in the affair, believing, and as I still think, with reason, that it would be a relief to the parties who had reason to dread being compromised, to learn that their secret accidentally divulged, had, at all events, fallen into the keeping of a gentleman and a man of honour.

I had hardly arrived at this resolution, when I heard the stealthy tread, and the uneasy respiration of the old woman on her return.

“Well, it’s all over, an’ a quick case it was,” she murmured, as she entered. “She may well be thankful, so she may, not to be under them, like many a poor creature that’s bad fur a night and a day, and longer.”

“And how is she?” I urged.

“Och, well enough — as well as can be,” she answered— “right well. Don’t be delaying any longer; an’ don’t drop the note, for the life of you. Tell him it’s a boy, an’ a real plentiful boy; and she’s getting on elegant.”

So saying, she hurried me to the hall-door, and observed in conclusion —

“Don’t clap the door, do ye mind? and if you have any message back, don’t knock loud — do you bear me?”

It was still profoundly dark, and the streets silent and deserted. It was past three o’clock, probably nearer four, as I knocked at Captain Jennings’ lodgings. He had a handsome set of apartments in Kildare-street, and through the blinds of the drawingroom windows I could see the glare of lights, and the shadows of persons in the room. The hall, too, was lighted; and from the promptitude with which the door was opened, as well as from the talking and laughter audible from the drawing-room, as I followed the servant up the stairs, it was manifest that Captain Jennings was seeing company.

The servant was a novice in his duties, I suppose; for instead of acquainting his master with my arrival, and leaving me to wait in the hall, he ushered me up at once into his presence. Perhaps, indeed, by way of compensation to my self-esteem, the worthy fellow, with more discrimination than those whom I had last encountered, detected something of the gentleman under my assumed lackey-ism. In obedience to his directions, therefore, and perhaps with some lurking curiosity to witness the contrasted situation of himself and of his victim, in the self-same hour, I stepped into the room. It was light as day with wax-lights, and the party, which consisted of some eight or ten, were for the most part engaged at cards. They were all talking and laughing with noisy gaiety; and an elegant supper was laid, with a profusion of plate and wine-coolers, at a long side-table. One of the first persons I saw was young Chadleigh, who was just concluding a satirical anecdote as I entered, and the next was Jennings. I saw the latter cast an angry glance at the servant, and instantly resume the smile with which he awaited the point of young Chadleigh’s story; but I plainly perceived that in spite of his command of muscle, his face had grown almost deadly pale.

He waved his hand impatiently to us to withdraw, and as I did so, I saw him fill out a glass of wine. In the midst of the buzz and laughter which followed Chadleigh’s anecdote, Captain Jennings joined me in the lobby, and as he did so, I heard Chadleigh call after him some quizzing insinuation as to the nature of my message, which, coming from that quarter, and uttered in all the thoughtless levity of gaiety and dissipation, sounded sadly enough in my car.

“Follow me,” said Jennings, drily, and led the way to the parlour. Placing the candle on the chimneypiece, and standing close by the fireplace, he signed to me to shut the door, which I accordingly did; and when, in obedience to another sign, I had approached so near that our conversation could be distinctly carried on in tones little above a whisper, he continued, with manifest tokens of agitation —

“You came — you came from” — and abruptly stopped, looking at me with a pallid countenance, in which was stamped the intensest anxiety.

“I come, sir, with this note and a message,” I replied, placing the letter in his hand.

He broke the seal and read the note hurriedly through, but without any change of expression; then looked at me with anxious abstraction for a second or two, and once more read the note through from end to end.

“And the — the patient,” he added, fixing his eyes on me again; “you know — I suppose you know who she is?”

“Yes — Miss Chadleigh,” I replied, with an effort.

“He knows it all,” he muttered, scarce audibly, and looking at me still with the same abstracted and fear-stricken expression. “And how it she?” he asked after a pause—” is she safe?”

“She is doing well, sir,” I replied; “she is safely over her trial.”

“That’s well,” he said, drawing a long breath, as if relieved, but without exhibiting any corresponding cheer in the expression of his face.”

“And the infant,” I began.

“Well,” said he, quickly, “what of it?”

“Is also doing well,” I replied— “a boy, the nurse desired me to tell you — a very fine boy, indeed.”

“The nurse!” he repeated, while his face darkened with renewed alarm— “What nurse? Why, my great God! she’s not mad enough — surely it can’t — she’s not at home?”

“No, indeed, sir, very far from her home, and not likely to be found either,” I replied.

He seemed relieved; again took up the note, but replaced it on the table unread, and turned, and leaned his head on his hands on the chimney-piece, as it seemed, either buried in profound reflection, or wrung by some sudden agony. After a while he turned about, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, stood with his back to the fireplace, and his head sunk forward. The light of the solitary candle upon the mantelpiece above him, deepened with its shadows the furrows of his contracted brow and down-drawn mouth. He looked, I thought, the very picture of comfortless and guilty wretchedness.

I had conceived instinctively, almost from the first moment I beheld him, a certain feeling of dislike toward Captain Jennings, and this predisposition my recent discoveries were, as you may readily suppose, by no means calculated to mitigate or remove. I could not help saying, in a tone which, had he been less agitated at the moment, might very possibly have provoked his anger —

“And may I ask, sir, have you no message of any kind for the unfortunate young lady?”

“Ay, ay, you’re right; I forgot — to be sure,” he answered, glancing quickly and anxiously around him; and then raising his hand in painful reflection to his face, replied—” You are very right — a message — yes, yes, yes.”

As he said this, he mechanically took up the note again, and looking vacantly at it for a few seconds, threw it, as it seemed, unconsciously upon the table. My eyes followed it involuntarily, and as it fell before me (it is, I hope, needless to say, totally without my intending it, and merely in the accidental way in which the eye is often irresistibly fascinated by, and attracted to, exactly the object from which we are most anxious to avert it), I saw, and in some inappreciable fraction of a second, actually read the three first words of the note: they were— “Darling, darling husband.” Turning it hastily face downward, I pushed it back again toward Captain Jennings.

“Husband!” unworthy as I believed the man to be, you would scarcely credit me were I to describe the sense of relief and delight with which my heart expanded as that one word met my eye. It seemed as if the voices of a thousand blessed angels were repeating it in melody and gratulations to my ear; in the glance that revealed it to me, I saw a creature rescued from the abyss of the darkest and most irretrievable of earthly ruin, and standing pure and safe in the light of heaven; my heart swelled within me, and tears rose to my eyes.

While those emotions agitated me, Captain Jennings continued lost in thought, and at last he said: —

“Ay, it is better to write and tearing off the outer leaf of the note which lay before him, he traced a line or two with his pencil, but checking himself, again paused, crumpled the note he had just commenced, and that he had received, together, applied them to the candle, and dropped them blazing into the grate.

“Say that I will be with her as soon as I can possibly get away,” said he; “but where is the house — where is she?” he added, suddenly.

I described by the land-marks with which he was acquainted, exactly the spot where the poor young lady was to be found.

“Then, just say as I told you, that I will be there without one moment’s avoidable delay.”

Thus speaking, he hastily led the way to the hall-door; for some of his half-tipsy guests were beginning to call for him, and, as it seemed, were about making an exploratory excursion from the drawing-room. Muttering a broken curse upon them all, he opened the door, and I heard him, as I walked down the stone steps, respond in tones of affected gaiety to their clamorous challenge. With the rapid pace which indicates an excited mind, I retraced my steps; the bells were chiming, and the watchmen drowsily calling four o’clock, as I approached the scene of my strange adventure.

“Thank God, at all events,” I fervently murmured—” thank God, the poor creature is not disgraced and ruined; a strange, perplexing, and, I fear, a most imprudent affair it unquestionably is; but, after all, what an escape! — how much to be thankful for!”

I had now reached ray destination, and was admitted. The young lady, I was told, was doing well; so I delivered my message, and took my place in the parlour as before, resolved to await the departure of Doctor Robertson, who was still up stairs, and to explain, as was my fixed intention, the foolish accident which had involved me in the affair; acquaint him with my name and address, and assure him of my secresy.

I had not waited very long, when I heard him, with creaking steps, slowly descending the stairs, issuing, as he did, some parting directions to the woman who attended him with the candle.

“I shall look in in the evening, after dark,” he said; “everything promises fairly, — so that will do; I’ll make my own way out; never mind — good morning.”

As the worthy man uttered these gruff civilities, I presented myself at the foot of the stairs, and requested a word with him in the parlour. Merely directing me to be brief, and with a prodigious yawn, he accompanied me thither. I then proceeded to lay before him a full statement concerning myself, and the causes of my participation in the business. He was first disposed to be angry; but my own frankness, and perhaps an old acquaintance with my father, an intimate of his youth, disarmed him, and my explanation ended by his shaking me good-naturedly by the hand.

“Egad, I believe I have been in greater fault of the two, young gentleman, in this affair,” he said; “for I undertook my part with my eyes open; and a troublesome and an awkward part it must e’en prove, at the best. But,” he added, in a changed tone, “with all its trouble and awkwardness, I would not have declined it for a thousand pounds; poor little thing; no, no; this was a matter of life or death; the poor child reposed confidence in me, and trusted me with the secret of her situation, under the seal of silence. I could not honourably divulge it; nor could I, with one particle of common humanity, refuse my aid; her life was in the balance; she would have had none attend her but me, and without proper assistance must have died; to have declined that aid, through any consideration of consequences affecting myself, would have been the act of a respectable scoundrel; it would have been to perpetrate a prudential murder.”

As he spoke, there came a hurried knocking at the hall-door.

“This must be Captain Jennings,” I said.

“Umph! he must not go up suddenly; they must prepare her for the meeting,” said he; and, opening the chamber door, he said to the attendant —

“Shew Captain Jennings, if this be he, into this chamber; and as soon as you think the lady sufficiently recovered to see him, you can tell him so.”

With this direction, he re-entered the room, and walked up and down once or twice, with rather an inauspicious expression of countenance, while he awaited the appearance of the new visitor; he had not long to wait; the door opened, and Captain Jennings, muffled in a cloak, entered the comfortless apartment.

Doctor Robertson received him with a stiff nod. After a few brief inquiries, rather drily answered, the physician said, in reply to a significant glance which Jennings had directed toward me —

“You need have no apprehension on account of his presence, Captain Jennings; whatever you have to say to me, may be said before him; he already knows all that is of moment in this affair, and his honour may be relied on.”

“Honour!” repeated Jennings; “so then he’s a gentleman, as I suspected.”

“Permit me, Captain Jennings,” said Doctor Robertson, “to recommend to you, what I conceive honour and common-sense alike indicate, as the proper course to be pursued in this painful affair. I have not had until this moment, it is true, an opportunity of so much as even speaking to you upon this subject, and do not know, even if I had, that I was at liberty to introduce it. I can have now, however, no scruple in fully telling you my mind; and I must say, that the extreme imprudence into which you have led an inexperienced and fondly-attached girl, threatens seriously to compromise her, not only with her own relatives, but in the eyes of the world. You have placed her in a situation calculated, unless it be at once explained, to prejudice her reputation fatally; and I am bound to say, as an old friend of the family, that unless you come forward frankly, and put Sir Arthur in possession of the real state of facts, I shall feel it my duty to do so myself.”

“There is no need of any disclosure — at least immediately,” said the young man, hurriedly. “Everything is arranged. No one but her old attendant has access to her chamber at home, and Sir Arthur and young Chadleigh don’t see her once in five weeks. They don’t suspect anything, and need not. Is it not clear that an explosion — a scene — just now, would be about the worst thing in the world for her?”

“Very true,” said Doctor Robertson, drily; “all very true; but if there be an explosion, there is no need it should reach her ears. No, no, sir. Believe me, the only honourable course now open before you, is that of promptitude and candour. You ought, without the delay of an hour, to acquaint Sir Arthur with the fact of your marriage.”

“And who the devil—” began Jennings, with a look which partook at once of rage and terror. The expression remained fixed for a time, but the sentence died away unfinished; and muttering some incoherent words, he walked, with a sort of half-agitated, half-defiant air, twice or thrice across the floor, and stopping at the empty fireplace, planted his foot upon the bar, and stood looking vacantly into the inhospitable grate, with an aspect as black and cheerless as its own.

“Well, sir,” said Doctor Robertson, somewhat sternly, “you will, of course, act as you think proper; but I again advise you to be the first to open this affair to Sir Arthur; for, as I nave already told you, he shall otherwise learn it all from myself. I have a very strong opinion about it.”

“Of course, of course,” said Jennings, petulantly; and continued, in a haughtier tone, perhaps intended to show Doctor Robertson that his further pursuing the subject would be considered impertinent— “By the way, sir, I ought to have thanked you before this for your able professional assistance.”

“Sir, I intended no obligation whatever to you. My interest is naturally strongly engaged on the poor young lady’s account,” replied Doctor Robertson, gruffly, as he buttoned up his great-coat to his chin, and then drew on his warm gloves; “for her I would, if need were, do a great deal more.”

He turned, stiffly and grimly, from the young man, shook me again by the hand, and took his departure.

Almost at the same moment, in obedience to an intimation from the attendant, Captain Jennings proceeded up the stairs to the chamber where the young lady lay. As he followed the matron up stairs, the wailing of a new-born baby reached his ears. This feeble and plaintive appeal to his paternal sympathies, was probably far from welcome; for he looked as if, but for very shame, he would have cursed the helpless little creature; and now he stood at the chamber-door. Perhaps some touch of better feelings moved him, for his look grew sadder and softened. He entered. Faint, and with eyes half-closed, the fair young mother — her sore trial over — lay in the hushed and darkened room. Weak and exhausted as she was, a faint cry of joy broke from her pale lips; and such a look of ecstasy welcomed his appearance, as must have moved a heart of stone.

“Oh! Richard, Richard — oh! Richard,” was all the poor creature could say, as he stooped over the bed and kissed her, with at least a show of fondness; while her feeble arm was clasped round his neck with an agony of delight, as if she had never hoped to have seen him again.

“Oh!  Richard — Richard, darling! — it is you — darling, it is you!”

She clung to him, sobbing, and smiling, and softly repeating words of endearment, till, gently disengaging himself, he kissed her again, clasped her hand in his, and pressed it, and wrung it fondly, as he sat by the bedside. Thus silently testifying his affection, he leaned back, so that the curtain interposed between his face and hers. Two or three bitter tears started down his checks, and such a look of unutterable anguish darkened his countenance, as might have shadowed the eternal despair of the damned. Thus some minutes passed, while he pressed the feeble hand he held with a feverish grasp.

This interview was prolonged to more than an hour; and at length Jennings, warned by the approach of the dawn, took his departure, in sore disorder and dismay — his heart agitated with a tumult of terrible passions and sensations, his brain burning with a thousand wild and irreconcilable plans and projects — a thoroughly miserable man.

Meanwhile, I had returned to my lodgings, and thrown myself into bed, not to awaken to the remembrance of my last night’s strange adventure until late in the day. It is, of course, unnecessary to say, that I felt the intensest curiosity respecting the progress and final denouement of this extraordinary affair. The conclusion was not long suspended.

Jennings had returned to his chamber in Kildare-street; but repose for him was out of the question. He had spent hours of agonized uncertainty; but at last his mind was made up, and his resolution taken.

“I have but one course to take — necessity controls me — I have no choice left,” he muttered. “What infernal influence could have possessed me! — what accursed witchcraft can have blinded and infatuated me! Great God! what a serious, what a frightful business, it is turning out. Well, I suppose it was my destiny. I wonder if the old fellow had any inkling of my real situation when he forbid me his house? Merciful Heaven! if I had but acted then like a man of common sense; but some accursed delusion was over me. I had got interested and piqued in the pursuit. I did not dream of mischief. I could swear, with my dying breath, I never meant harm, until accident and the devil — and poor, poor Mary herself — put that accursed piece of madness into my head. Curse my folly! It is a desperate, a frightful situation; but self-preservation is, they say, the first law of nature; and were I even to sacrifice myself, I don’t see that she would be essentially the better.” He consulted his watch, and continued—” My measures must be taken promptly; that meddling, doctor-fellow, will be on the fidgets till he does mischief. I can’t be too prompt.”

He rang the bell, directed the servant peremptorily to deny him to all visitors, drew the window-blinds, bolted the door, and then, seating himself before his desk, wrote, with painful attention and assiduity, for full two hours, without rising. This task completed, he carefully raised the manuscript, making various erasures and interpolations, and at last, folded carefully, sealed it, and placing it in his waistcoat pocket (in those days a tolerably capacious receptacle), he buttoned his coat across it.

“Will he do it?” he muttered, doubtfully; “we’ll see — we’ll see. In the first place, he may never be called on to say a word, pro or con; in the second, even if he be, this is as easily said as anything else; and, in the third, we will gild the pill pretty thickly.”

So saying, he opened a drawer in the desk, and took out a handful of guineas and a bundle of bank notes, the spoils of his last night’s successful play.

“Let me see what have I got in bank,” he reflected; “I must leave enough for my part of the business; it would not do to be money-bound just now. Ay, ay, he may have the three hundred. I think three hundred will be strong enough for him. Poor Mary — poor Mary!”

Having counted out, in notes and guineas, the sum he had named, he rolled them up, and stuffed them into his pocket; then muffling his face in a shawl, and putting on his hat and cloak, he sallied forth upon an expedition, of the last importance to his plans.

It was drawing towards evening, upon the same day, when a servant called at my lodgings with a note, and sent up word that he waited for an answer. I did not know the hand, but expecting an invitation, nevertheless, I broke the seal eagerly, and read the following — to a very different purport, as you may perceive: —

                    “Kildare-street.

“Captain Jennings presents his compliments to Mr. —— , and trusts that he will pardon the liberty which, under very peculiar circumstances, he takes, in venturing to entreat the favour of his (Mr. — — ‘s) presence for a few moments, upon a matter of the utmost importance, as respects an affair in which he has already evinced an interest. Captain Jennings has an engagement for this evening, but will be at home till seven o’clock; and will esteem it a real obligation if

Mr. —— will honour him with a call at any time before that hour.”

I instantly wrote a civil answer, complying with his request; and, full of impatience for the result, I prepared to follow the messenger without losing a moment.

My preparations were quickly made, and I was soon in the street, and traversing the intervening space between mine and Captain Jennings’ lodgings at a rapid pace. As I turned the corner of Nassau-street, I met my friend —— , a notorious gossip in his day. I perceived, by his at once taking my arm, and turning about with me, that he had a story to tell, and was rather shocked at his opening sentence —

“Well, what do you think of the affair in Stephen’s-green? — of course you have heard it all — about the Chadleighs; a shocking piece of business, upon my life — a devilish fine girl, too — a great pity.”

I affected surprise, and asked the particulars.

“Somewhere about twelve o’clock to-day,” he said, “old Sir Arthur received an invitation — at least so I’m told, for I have not yet had time to sift the matter myself — an invitation for himself and Miss Chadleigh, they say, to old Lady— ‘s, down in what-d’ye-call-it — that place in Kildare, you know; and they say — egad, I can scarce help laughing, though I’m devilish sorry too — they tell me her ladyship mentioned, by way of inducement, that young Lord Dungarret, an admirer, as it was thought, of Miss Chadleigh, was to be there; and this consideration determined the old boy to accept it, come what might, though his daughter had been ailing for a long time. And so he took his crutches, and hobbled up to her room, where he had not been for a month before, to tell her — ha! ha! — his sovereign will and pleasure; but, egad, the old boy had his hobble for nothing, for, rat me, the bird was flown, the cage was empty; the invalid had absconded, the lair lady had fled; how, why, whither, or with whom, remains a profound secret.”

“And when did she go?” I asked, anxious to ascertain how far the particulars were known.

“Oh, last night, and it is supposed by the back way,” he replied; “it was devilish well managed — a clever girl, sir — a deep scheme.”

“Do they suspect the purpose or the companion or her flight?” I inquired.

“The purpose! — poh, poh! that’s plain enough; I have not heard yet who was the gallant gay — but I forgot to tell you, by-the-bye, the old fellow — old Sir Arthur — put himself into such a devil of a frenzy, when he found it out, that he got a sort of a fit — a devilish bad fit, I am told. Poor old fellow! he is a deuced deal too purple and bull-necked to stand excitement. I should not be a bit surprised if he’s done for — regularly done for. There goes Dr. Robertson’s carriage — egad, direct to Stephen’s-green, too; I venture an even guinea, he’s going straight to shave and blister old Chadleigh. You know he’s their family physician — a great oddity, a perfect character. I’m told Lady Chadleigh, poor woman! used to say, whenever — by the way, it’s odd how things run in the blood — there’s Miss Chadleigh just taking after her mother, a run-away already.”

Here he broke off, for, seeing a friend at the other side of the street, he hastened across to tell the news to a fresh listener, and leaving me opportunity enough, for we had just reached the corner of Kildare-street, and for many reasons, I had no wish that he should see me enter Jennings’ lodgings.

What I had just heard, satisfied me that the catastrophe, whatever it might be, was certainly not far distant; and with a degree of anxiety proportioned to the imminence of the event, in which I could not help feeling the profoundest interest, I knocked at the hall-door, and was promptly shewn up stairs, and found myself vis-à-vis with Captain Jennings.

I found him in his dressing-gown and slippers. He looked pale and anxious, but had quite recovered his coolness and self-possession by this time.

“I feel that I have taken a great liberty, in giving you so much trouble,” he continued, after the usual salutations had been interchanged, and I had taken a chair; “but, with the exception of Doctor Robertson, with whom my acquaintance is just as slight as with you, I have no other gentleman to apply to in this most unhappy affair” — (here he slightly shrugged his shoulders, with an air of chagrin and discontent, which somehow impressed me more than all that had yet passed, with a conviction of that callous selfishness which I believed to be the basis of his character)— “You and Doctor Robertson are alone acquainted with the particulars of this business, and you will, I trust, forgive the preference which makes me, not, perhaps, unnaturally, select you, rather than him, as the depository of the only confidence I have to make.”

He said this in his most engaging and conciliatory manner; but, as I bowed in acknowledgment of the preference, I felt my original dislike of him rather increased than abated.

“I offer no defence whatever for my conduct; God knows I blame myself as severely as anybody else can possibly do,” he continued, with a contrite shake of the head; “I ran blindly into extreme temptation, and have compromised, not only myself, but a young lady, whom I would gladly die to extricate from the unfortunate position into which I have unguardedly led her.”

Equivocal as had been his agitation that morning, it was, at all events, genuine; but now he had recalled all the artificial graces of his manner. I saw in the polished ease of his remorse, and in the studied melancholy of his compassion, something indescribably repulsive and abominable.

“Without further tasking your patience,” he resumed, at the same time taking a paper from his desk, “I have to entreat your consent to become the depository of this paper. It is a piece of evidence which may throw an important light upon this affair; the copy of a document, which I keep in my possession, and which you will, perhaps, oblige me by retaining in yours; the nature of it you will see at a glance, and I have endorsed upon it the name and address of the party whose testimony it is, so that, if need be, there can be no difficulty in applying it properly. All I ask of you is, to guard it equally from destruction, and from the eyes of all others, but yourself; and that, whenever I write to you to that effect, you will kindly hand it to my law-agent in town, whom I will name to you, whenever it becomes necessary to employ one. Will you kindly undertake this commission?”

I could hardly decline an office, as it seemed, so easily performed. I so little liked the applicant himself, however, that a slight, and not very gracious hesitation, preceded my acceptance of its duties. He thanked me, however, profusely; and I had risen for the purpose of taking my departure, when a vehicle of some kind stopped at the hall-door, and a thundering double-knock announced the arrival of a visitor.

“Tell them I’m dressing,” said Jennings to the servant, who appeared at the room-door; and, in the next moment, the summons at the hall-door was answered.

“Captain Jennings is dressing for the evening,” I heard the servant say, in reply to the inquiry of the footman who had knocked.

This intimation, however, had not the desired effect, for the steps of the carriage were let down with a sharp clang, and, almost at the same moment, I heard a different voice, that, I presumed, of the visitor in person, demand —

“Is your master at home?”

The same answer was repeated, and the applicant for admission replied in a sham decisive tone —

“Ha! dressing for the evening, very good; then he is at home?”

“But, sir, I beg pardon; he positively cannot see anybody at present,” urged the man.

“He shall certainly see me,” retorted the visitor, in the same tone. I know the way — don’t mind.” From the moment the clatter of the carriage-steps smote my ear, my mind unaccountably misgave me, and a foreboding of impending collision and mischief, filled me with an almost painful suspense. My instinctive apprehensions did not deceive me. The drawing-room door was pushed abruptly open, and young Chadleigh entered the room.

The moment I saw him, I perceived that in his face which warned me of the truth of my vague anticipations. Pale, stern, and collected, he walked slowly a few steps into the room, bowed with an ominous and icy formality to Captain Jennings, and, in a tone so cold and deadly, as I think I never heard before, or since, said—” Captain Jennings, I presume you apprehend the subject of my visit?” t was scarcely necessary to put the question. He had advanced to receive Chadleigh with his usual air of frank and easy gaiety, their eyes met, and in the encounter he read the truth — the smile passed away in an instant from his countenance, and was succeeded by a look, to the full as stem and ominous as that which confronted him. The young men felt that a deadly quarrel lay between them, and I think I never saw a more portentous greeting.

“You have not announced it, sir,” said Jennings, with cold and measured politeness; “but I have no hesitation in saying, that I do suspect the cause of your visit.”

“Good, sir!” replied Chadleigh, in the same constrained voice; “I came on behalf of Miss Mary Chadleigh’s father, and in my own right, as her brother, to demand of you, in the first place, where that young lady at present is.”

“Without meaning to dispute your right to put that question,” replied Jennings, “I mean to stand upon mine, to decline answering it.”

“You refuse to answer?” said his visitor, while his countenance darkened.

“I do — most distinctly refuse,” repeated he.

“Pray, think better of it, sir,” retorted Chadleigh, with a ghastly mimicry of courtesy.

“Mr. Chadleigh,” replied Jennings, haughtily, “I recommend you strongly to act as a man of the world in this business. The mischief, whatever it be, is now past cure. If you will only allow events to take their course, scandal may be avoided, and a great deal of unnecessary trouble, exposure, and violence spared. If you will persist in pushing this matter to extremity, do so; upon your head be the consequences.”

“Sir,” said Chadleigh, “ you greatly mistake me, if you fancy that your mean and perfidious conduct, in spiriting away the daughter of a gentleman, who frankly told you that he peremptorily declined the connexion which your conduct seemed to offer — if you fancy that your base and mercenary conduct in inveigling her, a young lady entitled to a fortune, and with most suitable prospects before her, into a marriage with you, a mere adventurer—”

“Mr. Chadleigh, before you proceed further, let me ask you, have you actually made up your mind to push this affair to a public quarrel?” insisted Jennings.

“Yes, sir,” retorted Chadleigh, proudly and bitterly. “Mary Chadleigh has selected for herself — embraced her own degradation — married a man whom her father expressly forbid his house, because he suspected him of entertaining the schemes he has but too securely realized. She is now, and henceforward, to Sir Arthur and to me, a stranger; we renounce and disown her; and by — , she shall not stand between you and the punishment you deserve.” He paused; and added emphatically—” I presume you will be at home by eleven o’clock tonight?”

“Certainly, sir,” answered Jennings, calmly.

His visitor bowed sternly, and began to withdraw.

“I wish, if you please, to add one word,” said Jennings.

“Certainly,” said Chadleigh, returning.

Jennings looked down for a moment, in agitated and guilty abstraction — bit his lips, and grew deadly pale, as though inwardly agonized with a mortal struggle.

“I have to request your attention, too, Mr. — —” he said, addressing me, and arresting my departure. “It is, — unfortunately, due to myself that you should hear what I am about to say.”

“Be so good as to say, without further delay, what you desire me to hear,” said Chadleigh.

“Yes, sir; you have forced me to it,—” said Jennings, drawing himself up, and looking with a steady, and singularly evil scowl, full in his visitor’s face. “You talked of marriage?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Chadleigh.

“Well, sir, as you will have it a quarrel between us, it is, unfortunately, due to myself to say, that there is no such thing as marriage in the case.” —

Jennings spoke these words with a resolute and measured distinctness, which left no room for misapprehension.

“No! — no marriage!” said Chadleigh, after a hideous pause of some seconds, and speaking almost in a whisper, like one half-stunned, while he returned the guilty gaze of his transformed friend with a stare of actual horror.

For my own part, I confess I was scarcely one degree less astounded than Chadleigh, at this utterly unlooked-for declaration.

“Not married — not married! Why, great God, can it — is it credible! You monstrous, measureless villain—”

The flimsy varnish of affected courtesy was gone, and the hell-born passions it had masked broke forth in an instant, in undisguised and titanic revelation. With one hoarse execration, shrieked rather than spoken, Chadleigh advanced toward Jennings.

“Take care, Chadleigh — take care; I would not harm you,” said Jennings, sternly.

“Hold, for God’s sake,” I cried, interposing between the two young men. “Mr. Chadleigh, I implore of you — remember, consider; what can come of this?”

“Let me go, sir,” cried Chadleigh, hoarsely.

“Mr. Jennings,” I cried, still clinging to Chadleigh, for in his furious paroxysm of excitement, I could not tell what dreadful results might possibly attend a physical encounter, “for God’s sake, avoid this; you’ll have bloodshed else. Mr. Chadleigh, reflect; stay for one moment.”

“Let me go, sir; let me go, or by —— , I’ll strike you down,” cried Chadleigh, straining and struggling to reach the object of his fury.

“Get into your room, Mr. Jennings, unless you wish for murder. Go, for Heaven’s sake,” I repeated. “I can’t prevent it longer. I tell you go — go, in God’s name. Will you go, or not?” —

“Jennings’ momentary agitation had entirely disappeared with the immediate menace of such an encounter as that which threatened him. His physical courage no one had ever doubted; and the moment it was tasked, his intrepid calmness instantly returned. He hesitated for a second; then, with one glance of mingled remorse and disdain at Chadleigh, he turned, and strode sullenly into his chamber, flinging the door close after him. The key was, fortunately, in the outside; and, without giving Chadleigh time to get before me, I sprang to the door, locked it, and, placing the key in my pocket, stood facing the baffled assailant.

“Sir,” he said bitterly, “ by ——  — , you shall answer for this.”

“When and how you please, Mr. Chadleigh,” I replied, sadly. “I have done my duty, and no more, in preventing a murderous fray; and I thank God I have succeeded.”

He stood undecided for a few seconds. At last he said —

“Perhaps you were right, sir; and I ought to ask your pardon. You were right, sir, and I was wrong. Pardon me.”

I gave him the assurance he required, and he added abruptly —

“This is no place for me. Good night, sir.”

So saying, he left the room; and I, from the window, saw him re-enter the carriage, and drive away, ere I returned to turn the key in Jennings’ room. I did so, and called him; there was no answer. I pushed the door open a little, and looked in. He had thrown himself into a chair, and was sitting close by a table, his forehead laid upon his arm, and his face concealed — he was sobbing. He started up abruptly, on becoming aware of my presence, and with a violent effort commanded himself.

“Mr. —— said he, “pray don’t leave me, for a few minutes. Mr. —— , you don’t know what I am suffering, and what I have suffered. I am about the most miserable and unfortunate mortal you have ever seen or heard of — indeed I am. Sir, you can’t understand — I can’t explain to you the horrors of my position.”

“The poor young lady,” I said, coldly, “is certainly impressed with the belief that she is legally married. Dr. Robertson distinctly told me so — nay, he himself believed it.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he interrupted, vehemently; “but I can prove it is not so. The paper I have placed in your hand will show you that there has been no such thing. She thinks it — she believes, no doubt, poor creature; but she’s wrong — quite wrong.”

I was greatly shocked at the sinister eagerness with which Jennings laboured to impress this fact, which, of all others, I thought he ought naturally to be most anxious to conceal for the present, upon my conviction; and I could not forbear saying —

“At all events, you will not fail to make all the reparation now in your power, and—”

“What reparation?” he asked, vehemently.

“There is but one,” I answered, “which you can now offer; and that is, marriage.”

“You are right, indeed,” he answered, sullenly, after a long pause; “it is the only — the only reparation for such a wrong.”

He sank into a moody and compunctious silence. At last he said, abruptly —

“They talk of generosity, and impulse, and all that, but take my word for it, prudence is worth them all. My own utter want of reflection has done it. I have been drawn into a situation in which I am powerless, at least for good; but do me justice, sir; you must do me justice, for, by —— , designed no wrong; I am not a coldblooded wretch. I was led away by passion — misguided and betrayed into a position, as I told you, where I am no longer a free agent, and then my conduct is criticised, as if I could do just as I pleased. Is this justice or honesty? I’m railed at like a cold, scheming villain, and damned for not making reparation — I, that never laid a deliberate plot in my life, or hesitated to make atonement where I could. By heavens, sir, I tell you truth. Is this fair dealing — is it candour — is it common toleration?”

I reminded Jennings that I had no right to judge in the matter; and also intimated that I had already staid too long, and so rose to take my departure.

“Well, well, well,” he said, with a dreary sort of shrug; “patience, and shuffle the cards — who knows what may turn up — who knows? Though, egad, take it which way you will, it is about as cursed, black a looking business, as ever man was in for. It is hard — hard, by — . It looks as if they were all in a savage conspiracy to ruin me; and what good, in the devil’s name, can come of it — a pack of fools!”

I now took my leave. A feeling of curiosity, and, still more strongly, one of intense interest in the unfortunate young lady, with whose fate he was so disastrously connected, had tempted me, minute after minute, to prolong my visit. It was already nearly dark, and the street-lamps were burning. I had reached the corner of Grafton-street, buried in profound abstraction, when I was suddenly accosted by a familiar voice. It was that of my friend “Fitzgerald, a wild fellow, and a pleasant one to boot, and an accomplished adept in all the then important mysteries of the small-sword and pistol, and learned in all the lore of points of honour.

“Can you tell me,” said he, after our greeting, and taking me at the same time by the arm, and drawing me with him, “whether Dick Chadleigh has got into a scrape?”

“What kind of a scrape do you mean?” I asked, evasively.

“Why, he called on me when I was out, not half-an-hour ago,” he replied, “and left a hurried note, telling me I must go to him without a moment’s delay, on my return, about a little business. Now, there is but one kind of business I understand” — here he raised his arm once or twice significantly, as if balancing a pistol—” and I strongly suspect it must be upon that he Has called me to counsel; all my friends make use of me, you know, on such occasions. Have you heard anything of Chadleigh’s being likely to want my services in that way — eh?”

I told him I knew that high words had passed between him and Captain Jennings.

“Jennings — ho, ho!” said he, with a serious air— “a cool hand, I fancy. Egad, from the little I’ve seen of him, I’m inclined to think, if he is the man, it will be a matter of flints and powder — egad, it does look like business.”

I was not at all sorry to comply with Fitzgerald’s suggestion, to the effect that I should await his return in Brown’s coffee-house, and end the evening there in his company. My anxiety to learn the issue of the business was such, that I would gladly have done much more to satisfy it. Accordingly, I dropt into that public resort of idleness, while Fitzgerald, having called a coach, rumbled away to his interview with Chadleigh.

“I had sat there for considerably more than an hour, and was beginning to give up all hope of his return, when he entered.

“Well,” said he, when we had established ourselves at a table apart from the rest, “I have had a couple of odd — devilish odd conversations — , since I saw you. I don’t know, indeed, whether I am at liberty to tell you the subject of the quarrel.”

I interrupted him by assuring him that I already knew it; and having satisfied him upon this point, he proceeded to detail the particulars, which I shall condense for the benefit of the reader.

He had, it seemed, found Chadleigh still much excited, and quite determined upon a hostile meeting; indeed, so resolute upon the point, that he would not so much as hear of anything to the contrary. His directions were peremptory, and amounted simply to this — that arrangements for a meeting were to be completed without a moment’s delay. All details, of course, were left to the direction of his friend; with respect to the quarrel itself, however, he was not invested with any right of diplomacy. Finding Chadleigh thus implacably resolved, Fitzgerald undertook the affair, which for other parties he had so often filled with singular efficiency, and was duly invested with the important functions of a “second” in the affair. Leaving Chadleigh, however, and being still of opinion that, if possible, the matter ought, for every reason, to be quietly adjusted, he resolved, upon his own responsibility, to make one final effort to prevent a catastrophe which, even if unattended by any more tragical consequences, must, at all events, have the effect of irreparably disgracing Miss Chadleigh. His belief was, that there remained one chance, and one only, of saving the unfortunate young lady, and that was, a private marriage with the author of her shame, accomplished without the delay of a single tour, if possible, so that the public might hear of the elopement and the marriage at one and the same time. Filled with this project, Fitzgerald hurried up the stairs of Jennings’ lodgings. The servant announced him as he entered the drawing-room. Jennings had altered his purpose, and determined, after what had passed, to remain at home. He was still in his dressing-gown, and, when his visitor entered, was sitting before his open desk, the candles burning beside him, and what seemed like a miniature in his hands. He was looking intently upon it, with no very loving aspect, when Fitzgerald entered; but he hastily thrust it, face downward, among the open letters, which lay in multitudinous confusion in the profundity of the old-fashioned desk, and shutting all up quickly, he locked it fast, and rose to receive him. Fitzgerald observed, also, that some torn papers were burning on the fire, and Jennings glanced quickly towards them, to see that they were actually destroyed.

“I have the honour, Captain Jennings, to wait upon you with a communication from Mr. Chadleigh,” said Fitzgerald.

“Pray, sir, take a chair,” said Jennings, coldly, and with a formal bow.

Fitzgerald complied, and resumed —

“I need scarcely, I apprehend, detail the reasons which have induced this step. You have already had an interview with my principal, Mr. Chadleigh.”

“There is certainly no occasion, sir, to say more. I do perfectly understand the nature of your visit, which I have, indeed, been expecting; and have only to say, as Mr. Chadleigh has pushed matters to extremity, I apprehend your instructions are very brief, and that our present business may be quickly arranged; if you will favour me with your card, my friend shall wait upon you at whatever hour you name.”

“To say the truth, Mr. Jennings,” replied Fitzgerald, you are right in supposing that my instructions have been very brief — in a word, they were those of absolute and unconditional hostility; this, however, is a case of such very peculiar delicacy — a case in which forbearance is so eminently important — so imperatively called for by all the circumstances, that I have resolved to take a responsibility upon myself, and endeavour to arrange this matter amicably, if, indeed, it be possible.”

Jennings continued to regard him with earnest attention, but did not speak.

“In short, as far as my influence goes, I would guarantee such an adjustment, upon one condition, which you can have no possible objection in submitting to — that you repair the dishonour you have done Miss Chadleigh, by marrying her, before her present unhappy position becomes public.”

Jennings grew deadly pale, and his features seemed to contract with the intensity of acute suffering, as he gazed for a few seconds upon the speaker, and then, abruptly rising, with a gesture like wringing his hands, he turned towards the fire, and remained standing for a time with his face averted.

“Well, sir,” exclaimed Fitzgerald, after a pause of considerable surprise — for he had expected a prompt and grateful acceptance of his proffered interposition— “what do you say — what am I to understand?”

Jennings heaved a dreary sigh, and said, gloomily and desperately enough —

“What you propose is absolutely out of the question — impracticable.”

“Then, sir, take the consequences,” said Fitzgerald, with irrepressible indignation; “you have, at least, quieted my scruples in acting against you — there is but one way of settling the matter now.”

“Just so, sir,” said Jennings, who had recovered his haughty coldness; “and, as I must leave details to the discretion of my friend, I have only to ask you at what hour precisely it will be convenient to you to see him?”

Fitzgerald named ten o’clock that night, and placed his card in Jennings’ hand.

“Very good, sir,” replied the latter, having glanced at it; “I presume that both parties are equally anxious to have this affair concluded with all possible despatch; my friend shall attend at the appointed hour.”

With these words they parted.

“I don’t know how it is,” said Fitzgerald, after he had concluded his narrative, “but this thing has put me quite out of spirits — it is a bad affair, a d — d bad business; and, mark my words, so sure as you sit there, one or other of them will lose his life by it; they are both of them game — game to the back-bone — game every inch, sir; and Chadleigh is in a murderous, black temper, too. Somehow, this is the first business of the sort, I ever had a hand in, that made me mopish; d — n me, but it smells all over of death and winding-sheets.”

As the mortal crisis of this strange tragedy approached, my interest in its denouement became more and more intense. At my entreaty, Fitzgerald undertook to let me know, so soon as they were completed, the detailed arrangements for the approaching duel. As he had sundry preparations to make, he was obliged to leave me, and I walked home, in dejected solitude, to my lodgings.

I was no sooner alone in my apartment, than I recollected the paper which had been entrusted to my care by Jennings. He had not only omitted to prohibit its perusal in my case, but had actually told me, in so many words, that I was at liberty to read it. There was, therefore, no impediment to the honourable gratification of my curiosity; and, secure from interruption, I proceeded to examine the document.

It purported to be a statement of certain occurrences, in connexion with a clandestine visit made by the deponent, one “Benjamin Cruise, clerk, resident next door to the Cow and Cleaver, in Smithfield, in the city of Dublin;” at the solicitation of Mrs. Martha Keating, at the house of Sir Arthur Chadleigh, in St. Stephen’s-green. The narrative was to the effect, that the reverend gentleman in question was applied to, on or about a certain day, nearly a year preceding the date of the document in question, to attend at the back entrance of the said mansion; where, according to arrangement, he waited until about one o’clock, when he was admitted, and conveyed with great precaution up a back-stair, and into a chamber, where was a young lady, as it seemed, in much agitation; and whom, as he was then and there informed by the old woman, his conductress, he believes to have been Miss Mary Chadleigh; by which name, he was afterwards directed to marry her to a certain young gentleman, whom he now knows to be Captain Jennings, and who, shortly after his, Cruise’s arrival, joined the party in the said chamber, with like caution; that he, Cruise, had then, at the desire of the party, proceeded to unite Miss Chadleigh and Captain Jennings, according to the ritual of the Church of England; and that a noise in another part of the house having alarmed them, — the ceremony was interrupted in the introductory part, and before the giving of the ring; and he and Captain Jennings, were together hurried out from the house the same way; and, that he never before, or since then, — saw Miss Alary Chadleigh, and knew not of her having been married by any other clergyman. This statement, which was given with great aggravation of detail, was duly dated, and signed in full, by the reverend gentleman, in those days, a not very creditably-notorious personage.

The perusal of this document impressed me still more unfavourably respecting Jennings. There was something sinister and equivocal about the whole thing. The infamous character of the degraded man who signed it; the industrious detail with which it had been prepared; and, above all, the unaccountable precaution which had suggested the adoption of such a measure, filled me with painful misgivings, to the effect that some gross and horrible delusion had been practised upon poor Miss Chadleigh; and I could not forbear deeply regretting, that I had suffered myself, under conditions of secrecy, to be made the depositary of so suspicious a document.

I was pursuing this unsatisfactory train of reflections, when a note was placed in my hand; it was couched in the following terms: —

 

“Dear — ,

At seven o’clock to-morrow morning, on the Fifteen Acres.

“Yours in haste,

“FITZGERALD.”

 

I spent a -restless night, and was up long before dawn. Having completed my toilet, I walked some way into town, in the grey twilight of coming morning; and when I had, as I calculated, consumed the greater part of the necessary interval, I got into a hackney-coach, and drove directly to the place of rendezvous. Availing myself of a screen of bushes, I stopped the carriage, and got out, unobserved from the scene of action. As soon as I obtained a view of the ground, I observed there a coach, and a little group of three persons, who were standing, listlessly, close beside it; two or three gentlemen on horseback — mere spectators, of course, like myself — were also on the ground. I walked as near as I decently could to the group I have mentioned, and saw that Chadleigh and Fitzgerald were two of the number. The latter looked at his watch, and mounted the coachbox, to command a more extended view; shading his eyes with his hand, he looked along the skirting of wood which bounds the place, in the direction of the city, and at last his eye seemed to settle upon a distant object. I  followed the direction of his gaze, and saw the top of a carriage moving in the distance.

“Here,” I thought, “comes Jennings; which of them is to leave the field unhurt, and which—” I shrank from the inquiry, merely mental as it was, with something like a shudder.

“Poor Mary Chadleigh I whichever way it ends, its issue must be, to her, a tragedy.”

Fitzgerald had descended from his post of observation, and recognizing me, he walked up, and shook me by the hand. He looked pale and stern.

“They are coming,” said he, glancing towards the vehicle which was now rapidly approaching.

“Rather late — are they?” I asked — more from want of something to say than any other cause.

“No, no; a quarter past seven was fixed on, subsequently to ray note, last night; we should scarcely have had light earlier,” he said.

“The weapons are pistols?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered; “and we may as well begin to make our preparations. Come with me; you’ll not be in the way; I won’t stand on ceremony when the time comes for you to withdraw and leave Major Gurney and myself to our deliberations.”

So saying, he drew me with him to the side of the carriage.

“Take out the case,” he said to the man who stood by the carriage door; not that — those are the instruments; leave it where Dr. — placed it — the fiat case — that’s right; just keep it in your hand; and when I beckon to you, bring it over to me quickly; there, don’t shake it.”

We now walked up to Chadleigh, who stood moodily and doggedly, with his surtout buttoned up to the chin; and exchanging, now and then, a brief word or two with his companion — a slim, pale-faced, young surgeon, who was, evidently, but one degree less frightened than if he had been himself a principal. Fitzgerald dropped my arm as he approached, and leaving me at a little distance, observed, consulting his watch —

“Eight minutes before their time.” Chadleigh nodded.

“They have brought advice, too,” suggested the little surgeon, timidly; “there is a second carriage.”

“There’s no need to waste time,” said Chadleigh; “we had better walk on a little to meet them.”

The steps of the first carriage had, by this time, been let down; and Jennings, followed by a stiff, elderly gentleman, with a red, important face, and a military air, descended upon the turf. After, as it seemed, a few directions to the servants, they began to walk towards us, briskly, followed by an attendant, carrying a pistol-case; and with the carriage, which carried their medical friend, a little in the rear.

My heart swelled within me as those two little groups approached one another, in grim silence, over the smooth sward. Gracious God! what an awful account for eternity was to be closed ere they parted!

On they came, briskly and steadily, through the keen and misty morning air — nearer and nearer — until the interposing space became so limited that each party, as it were, by mutual consent, slackening their pace, came slowly to a halt, at some dozen steps apart, and interchanged, in silence, a stern and formal salutation. Fitzgerald stept forward, and was met about hall-way by the grim elderly gentleman whom I have described. After another salutation, as formal, they withdrew a little, and conducted a brief conference, in short, decisive whispers. Meanwhile, those who, either accidentally, or by design, had been spectators of the proceedings, began to gather about the spot on which the combatants were placed.

I had thought, once or twice, that Jennings perceived my presence, and now I was assured of it.

“Mr. —— ,” he said, in a low, hurried tone, “I have a request to make.”

“Pray, state it, sir,” I replied, approaching.

“It is just this — should I happen to fall, remain here for a few moments, as I may feel it necessary to make a communication to you of the last importance, not to myself, but to others.”

I undertook to comply with this request, and withdrew.

There was not the slightest perceptible tremor, not the least indication of excitement, in his manner, voice, or aspect, excepting that he was, perhaps, a little paler than usual, and his eyes were unusually dilated. With the restlessness of suspense, I walked to the spot where Chadleigh was standing, and, almost at the same moment, Fitzgerald returned.

“What is the distance?” asked Chadleigh.

“Ten paces,” rejoined Fitzgerald.

“Too much,” said he, gruffly.

“It is the usual thing; you don’t want to have us look blood-thirsty,” retorted Fitzgerald.

“And for that reason, I’d like to have it settled one way or other at the first shot.”

“It will be settled time enough,” said the second, and, unlocking the pistol-case, he proceeded to load the weapons; a silence, hardly broken by a whisper, followed, during which the click of ramrods, and the cramming home of wadded bullets were ominously audible.

“Are you ready, Mr. Fitzgerald?” inquired Jennings’ second; “if so, we had better place our men at once.”

A piece of money was thrown, up for choice of ground; Jennings won.

“Luck’s so far with us, sir; I hope it may not turn,” remarked the veteran, with a ghastly jocularity.

Chadleigh disencumbered himself of his surtout, and the combatants took their ground respectively.

“Gentlemen,” said the major, addressing the spectators, “have the goodness to draw back a little; some of you may be hurt, else.”

The suggestion was complied with, and a breathless silence followed.

“Are you ready, gentlemen,” inquired the major.

Each answered in the affirmative.

After a brief pause the word “fire” was given, each raised his weapon, but Chadleigh only fired. Jennings must have had a narrow escape, for he shook his head, put his hand to his ear, as if a hornet had stung him, then, quickly raising the pistol, he fired into the air, threw the weapon up, and caught it by the muzzle as it descended.

“D —— e, sir, that won’t do,” exclaimed Chadleigh, in a tone of bitter exasperation, “you may throw away your shot, if you will, but I’m cursed if you get out of the business on these terms; it is the act of a poltroon and a scoundrel to sneak out of a quarrel that way; I’ll baulk your scheme, for you—”

“Don’t say a word,” said Jennings, sternly, interrupting Fitzgerald, who was about to interfere, “I call you all to witness I have stood his fire, and without returning it — that’s all; let him take the consequences of his vindictive obstinacy. I’ll not stand to be shot at like a target; I’ve a right to defend myself, and by ——

I’ll do it.”

“Certainly; ’tis very just and sensible; the very point I was going to put,” said the major, with a brisk approval, that strongly contrasted with the savage intensity of Jennings’ tone.

It was plain that the angry and mortal passions of combat were, in Jennings, at last thoroughly aroused.

I heard him say to Major Gurney, once or twice, impatiently, “make haste,” and saw him dart one or two lowering glances at Chadleigh. The preliminaries for a second exchange of shots were completed in a few moments — the signal was given — and both fired so exactly together, that, from the report, one would have believed the explosion a single one. Jennings’ shot was well directed, though accident defeated its aim; it struck the trigger-guard of Chadleigh’s pistol, which was nearly forced from his hand by the shock, and glancing off, the ball buried itself in the sod. Jennings, on the other hand, stood immovable, while one might slowly count three, then staggered a little, dropped his pistol, and fell suddenly to the ground. Chadleigh walked forward a few hesitating steps, checked himself, and, in an agitated voice, said to the surgeon who had accompanied him —

“You may be wanted here — by — he’s hurt! Fitzgerald, come away — come, I say.”

Meanwhile, amid a babel of conflicting and exciting suggestions, the surgeon, ordering the crowd to stand Back, had the wounded man raised a little on the carriage cushions, and was proceeding to examine the injury, but Jennings said, faintly —

“Don’t — don’t — it’s all of no use.”

He invited me, with a glance and a flight gesture, to approach.

“One word,” he said, speaking with great difficulty. I stooped down, to bring my ear as near him as I could. “ It’s all a lie — all that — the paper — see the man, and tell him I said so — poor Mary — I made him do it, but I could not help it — there’s no use in maintaining the cheat any longer — I’m dying. Keep him away,” he continued, faintly turning his gaze for a moment on the surgeon, who was approaching, and then on me, “he can do nothing for me — only listen to me — my last word — that paper is — is a lie — we were married — I can — I can scarcely speak — don’t — don’t — are you going — hold me — oh God!”

I can never forget the look that Jennings fixed on me — the fearful, imploring gaze of his dilated eyes, filled with the wild, deep, awful meaning of death — the strangling effort to speak — the ghastly pallor — and then, the dropping of the jaw — the mouth, through which the breath of life was never more to stir, helplessly agape — the eyes, with the deep earnestness of their awful meaning, fixed for ever — and the stern movelessness of the darkened brow. Was this the gay, vain, reckless Jennings? Was this mute but fearful monitor of death, propped-up before us, indeed the frivolous, light-hearted, sensual man of the world, among whose dreams and calculations the warning shadow of death had never glided?

“By — he is dead,” said one of the by-standers, breaking the breathless silence that had followed.

The surgeon kneeled down beside him, placed his band over the dead man’s heart, raised his arm, and held his pulse for a moment — then replaced the hand by his side in silence. I remember seeing the grass that he had plucked, dropping from the stiffening fingers.

“Lift the body into the carriage, and drive to Kildare-street,” said the physician, addressing the servants.

* * * * *

Poor Mary Chadleigh was long held in ignorance of this, to her, overwhelming catastrophe. At length, however, it could be no longer concealed; and the revelation was followed by a brain-fever, which first threatened her life, and then her reason. She recovered, however, with a mind unimpaired, although with a shattered constitution. With her younger brother and her child, the youthful widow found an asylum for years in England, until the death of Sir Arthur put her in possession of the fortune which his will could not control.

One circumstance connected with the history of Jennings’ fate, however, never reached her ear. I had taken care to procure, though not without considerable difficulty at starting, the fullest evidence of the marriage — and afterwards learned, from the younger brother, whose return had, perhaps, precipitated the catastrophe, a circumstance which accounted for what had, for a time, appeared to me the gratuitous villany of Jennings, in himself denying, and suborning others to deny, a marriage, whose existence was necessary to protect Mrs Chadleigh from the agonizing degradation, the appalling ruin, with which she had been so imminently, though unconsciously, threatened. Jennings, it seemed, had actually married a woman of very equivocal rank, and more than equivocal character, in India. There were circumstances, however, which made the validity of this marriage doubtful, and the woman herself had left him, and formed a vicious connexion there; so that he had regarded the marriage as dissolved by mutual consent, and never reckoned upon the remote contingency of her turning up, by any accident. By a fatal coincidence, however, it happened, that, of the few individuals who knew of this connexion, his intimate and confidential friend, Captain Chadleigh, had been one. His supposed death had, however, quieted those alarms, which would have precluded the moral possibility of Jennings’ hazarding the audacious step which ended so fatally for himself, and the unexpected and impending return of Chadleigh was the first event which recalled the reckless and unprincipled man to a sense of his actual position. How often is crime unavailing for its meditated purpose, and effective only for the ruin of him who plans it. While Jennings was stoutly denying his marriage with Mary Chadleigh, to avoid the fancied danger of a prosecution, the poor young lady’s brother was bringing with him tidings of the death (long previous to his marriage with Miss Chadleigh) of the profligate woman, whose claim upon his hand had driven him to the selfish and desperate expedient of denying his union with the too-confiding creature whom his ardent and impetuous pursuit had won to life-long sorrow. Yet I have lived to see the offspring of this inauspicious marriage, Arthur Chadleigh, a member of parliament, and the sole inheritor of the great Chadleigh estates in Ireland.