strange
times, then! ay, and pleasant times too." And with such reflections on
the past, he fell off into a dreamy half-consciousness, during which
Tiernay stole from the room and left him alone.

Faint and trembling with agitation, Mary Leicester was standing all this
while at the door of the sick chamber. "Did I hear aright, Doctor?" said
she; "was that his voice that sounded so cheerfully?"

"Yes, my dear Miss Mary, the peril is by; but be cautious. Let him not
speak so much, even with you. This is a sweet quiet spot,--Heaven grant
he may long enjoy it!"

Mary's lips muttered some words in audibly, and they parted. She sat
down alone, in the little porch under the eave. The day was a delicious
one in autumn, calm, mellow, and peaceful; a breeze, too faint to ripple
the river, stirred the flowers and shook forth their odor. The cottage,
the leafy shade, through which the tempered sunlight fell in fanciful
shapes upon the gravel, the many colored blossoms of the rich garden,
the clear and tranquil river, the hum of the distant waterfall,--they
were all such sights and sounds as breathe of home and home's happiness;
and so had she felt them to be till an unknown fear found entrance into
her heart and spread its darkness there. What a terrible sensation comes
with a first sorrow!

CHAPTER XIV. MR. LINTON REVEALS HIS DESIGNS.

With fame and fortune on the cast,
He never rose a winner,
And learned to know himself, at last,
"A miserable sinner."

Bell.

It was about ten days or a fortnight after the great Kennyfeck dinner,
when all the gossip about its pretension, dulness, and bad taste had
died away, and the worthy guests so bored by the festivity began to
wonder "when they would give another," that a gentleman sat at breakfast
in one of those large, dingy-looking, low-ceilinged apartments which are
the choice abodes of the viceregal staff in the Castle of Dublin. The
tawdry and time-discolored gildings, the worn and faded silk hangings,
the portraits of bygone state councillors and commanders-in-chief,
grievously riddled by rapier-points and pistol-shots, were not without
an emblematic meaning of the past glories of that seat of Government,
now so sadly fallen from its once high and palmy state.

Although still a young man, the present occupant of the chamber appeared
middle-aged, so much had dissipation and excess done the work of time on
his constitution. A jaded, wearied look,