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that marries Nora Brady must first kill me--do you mind that?'
'Pooh, sir,' said Mick, turning away, 'kill you--flog you, you mean!
I'll send for Nick the huntsman to do it;' and so he went off.
Captain Fagan now came up, and taking me kindly by the hand, said I
was a gallant lad, and he liked my spirit. 'But what Brady says is
true,' continued he; 'it's a hard thing to give a lad counsel who is
in such a far-gone state as you; but, believe me, I know the world,
and if you will but follow my advice, you won't regret having taken
it. Nora Brady has not a penny; you are not a whit richer. You are
but fifteen, and she's four-and-twenty. In ten years, when you're
old enough to marry, she will be an old woman; and, my poor boy,
don't you see--though it's a hard matter to see--that she's a flirt,
and does not care a pin for you or Quin either?'
But who in love (or in any other point, for the matter of that)
listens to advice? I never did, and I told Captain Fagan fairly,
that Nora might love me or not as she liked, but that Quin should
fight me before he married her--that I swore.
'Faith,' says Fagan, 'I think you are a lad that's likely to keep
your word;' and, looking hard at me for a second or two, he walked
away likewise, humming a tune: and I saw he looked back at me as he
went through the old gate out of the garden. When he was gone, and I
was quite alone, I flung myself down on the bench where Nora had
made believe to faint, and had left her handkerchief; and, taking it
up, hid my face in it, and burst into such a passion of tears as I
would then have had nobody see for the world. The crumpled riband
which I had flung at Quin lay in the walk, and I sat there for
hours, as wretched as any man in Ireland, I believe, for the time
being. But it's a changeable world! When we consider how great our
sorrows SEEM, and how small they ARE; how we think we shall die of
grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of
ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what business
has time to bring us consolation? I have not, perhaps, in the course
of my multifarious adventures and experience, hit upon the right
woman; and have forgotten, after a little, every single creature I
adored; but I think, if I could but have lighted on the right one, I
would have loved her for EVER.
I must have sat for some hours bemoaning myself on the garden bench,
for it was morning when I came to Castle Brady, and the dinner-bell
clanged as usual at three o'clock, which wakened me up from my
reverie. Presently I gathered up the handkerchief, and once more
took the riband. As I passed through the offices, I saw the
Captain's saddle was still hanging up at the stable-door, and saw
his odious red-coated brute of a servant swaggering with the
scullion-girls and kitchen-people. 'The Englishman's still there,
Master Redmond,' said one of the maids to me (a sentimental black-
eyed girl, who waited on the young ladies). 'He's there in the
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