Part 68 (1/2)

'Another candidate for the leg of---- Eh! what's this?' said he, as I rose and advanced to meet him; while Louisa, blus.h.i.+ng deeply, buried her head in her hand, and then starting up, left the room.

'Captain, Captain,' said Paul gravely, 'what does this mean? Do you suppose that because there is some difference in our rank in life, that you are privileged to insult one who is under my protection? Is it because you are the Guardsman and I the attorney that you have dared to take a liberty here which in your own walk you couldn't venture on?'

'My dear Mr. Rooney, you mistake me sadly.'

'If I do not mistake you, I'll put a hole in your body as sure as my name's Paul,' was the quick reply.

'You do, then, and wrong me to boot. I have been long and ardently attached to Miss Bellew. From the hour I met her at your house I loved her. It is the first time we have met since our long separation: I determined it should not be lost. I 've asked her to be my wife.'

'You have! And what does she say?'

'She has consented.'

'Rum-ti-iddity, iddity!' said Paul, snapping his fingers, and capering about the room like a man deranged. 'Give me your hand, my buck! I 'd rather draw the settlements, so help me, than I 'd see the warrant to make me Master of the Rolls. Who 'd say there isn't luck in a leg of pork? She's a darling girl; and beautiful as she is, her looks isn't the best of her--an angel as sure as I am here! And look here'--here he dropped his voice--'seven thousand a year, that may be made nine!

Hennessy's farm is out of lease in October; and the Cluangoff estate is let at ten s.h.i.+llings an acre. Hurroo! maybe I won't be drunk to-night; and bad luck to the Cossack, Tartar, Bohemian, or any other blackguard I'll let into the house this day or night! Sworn, my lord.'

After some little discussion, it was arranged that if Louisa would give her consent to the arrangement, the marriage should take place before the Rooneys left Paris. Meanwhile, Paul agreed with me in keeping the whole matter a perfect secret from everybody, Mrs. Rooney herself included. Our arrangements were scarcely completed when O'Grady appeared. Having waited for me some time at his hotel, he had set out in search of me.

'I'm your man to-day, Paul,' said he. 'You got my note, I suppose?'

'All right,' said Mr. Rooney, whose double secret of the marriage and the leg of pork seemed almost too much for him to bear.

'I suppose I may tell Phil,' said I in a whisper.

'No one else,' said Paul, as we left the house, and I took O'Grady's arm down the street.

'Well, I have frightened De Vere to some purpose,' said O'Grady. 'He has made a full confession about Burke, who was even a deeper villain than we supposed. What do you think? He has been the spy of the Bonapartist faction all this time, and selling old Guillemain as regularly as the others. To indulge his pa.s.sion for play, he received the pay of four different parties, whom he pitted against one another exactly as he saw proper. Consummate clever scoundrel!--he had to deal with men whose whole lives are pa.s.sed in the very practice of every chicanery and deceit, and yet he has jockied them all. What a sad thing to think that such abilities and knowledge of mankind should be prost.i.tuted to the lowest and most debasing uses; and that the sole tendency of such talent should be to dishonour and disgrace its possessor! Some of his manufactured despatches were masterpieces of cleverness.'

'Well, where is he now? Still in Paris?'

'No. The moment he had so far forgotten himself as to strike De Vere, he forged a pa.s.sport and returned to London, carrying with him hosts of papers of the French authorities, which to our Foreign Office will be very acceptable. De Vere meanwhile feels quite at his ease. He was always afraid of his companion, yet can't forgive him his last indignity.

'No! A blow!'

'Not at all; you mistake. His regrets have a different origin. It is for not backing the ”rouge” that he is inexorable towards him. Besides, he is under the impression that all these confessions he has been making establish for him a kind of moral insolvency act, by which he is to come forth irresponsible for the past, and quite ready to contract new debts for the future. At this moment his greatest point of doubt consists in whether he should marry your cousin, Lady Julia, or Miss Bellew; for, in his own phrase, ”he must do something that way to come round.”'

'Impudent scoundrel!'

'Fact, I a.s.sure you; and so easy, so unaffected, so free from embarra.s.sment of any kind is he, that I'm really quite a convert to this modern school of good manners, when a.s.sociating with even such as Burke conveys no feeling of shame or discomfort. More than could be said some forty years ago, I fancy.'

It was the hour of my mother's morning reception, and we found the drawing-room crowded with loungers and fas.h.i.+onable idlers, discussing the news of the day, and above all the Roni _fete_, the extraordinary finale to which gave rise to a hundred conjectures--some a.s.serting that Monsieur de Roni's song was a violent pasquinade against the Emperor Alexander; others, equally well informed, alleging it was the concerted signal for a general ma.s.sacre of the Allies, which was to have begun at the same moment in the Rue Montmartre. She is a Bonapartist, a Legitimist, a Neapolitan, an Anversoise,' contended one after another--my only fear being that some one would enlighten the party by saying she was the wife of an Irish attorney. All agreed, however, she was _bien mauvais ton_; that her _fete_ was, with all its magnificence, anything but select; her supper superb, but too crowded by half; and, in fact, that Madame Roni had enjoyed the pleasure of ruining herself to very little other purpose than that of being generally ridiculed and laughed at.

'And this niece, or ward, or whatever it is--who can tell anything of her?' said my mother.

'Ah, _pardieu!_ she's very handsome,' said Grammont, with a malicious smile.

'Perfect,' said another; 'quite perfect; but a little, a very little too graceful Don't you think so?'

'Why what do you mean?' said Lady Charlotte, as her eyes sparkled with animation at the thought of a secret.

'Nothing,' replied the last speaker carelessly; 'except that one always detects the _danseuse_. She was thinner when I saw her at Naples.'