dear," said Miss O'Hara to Mrs. Kennyfeck, "that
young man had made some unhappy connection; that's the secret of this
letter, and when they get into a scrape of the kind it puts marriage out
of their heads altogether. It was the same with Captain Morris,"--here
she whispered still lower, the only audible words being, "without my
ever suspecting,--one evening--a low creature--never set eyes upon--ah,
man, man!" And with this exclamation aloud, Aunt Fanny took her candle
and retired.

About a minute after, however, she re-entered the drawing-room, and
advancing close to her sister, said, with all the solemnity of deep
thought,--

"Peter is no good in this case, my dear; send him home at once. That man
will 'blaze' for the asking." And with a nod of immense significance she
finally withdrew.

CHAPTER XX. HOW ENRIQUE'S LETTER WAS LOST AND FOUND.

"Arcades ambo!"

Blackguards both!

In the window of a very pretty cottage-room overlooking the Liffey, and
that romantic drive so well known to Dub-liners as the "low road" to
Lucan, sat Tom Linton. He was enjoying a cigar and a glass of weak
negus, as a man may enjoy such luxuries seated in the easiest of chairs,
looking out upon one of the sweetest of woodland landscapes, and feeling
the while that the whole was "his own." If conscientious scruples
had been any part of that gentleman's life philosophy, he might have
suffered some misgivings, seeing that the cottage itself, its furniture,
the plate, the very horses in the stable and the grooms about it,
had been won at the hazard-table, and from one whose beggary ended in
suicide. But Linton did not dwell on such things, and if they did for
an instant cross his mind, he dismissed them at once with a contemptuous
pity for the man who could not build up a fortune by the arts with which
he had lost one. He had not begun the world himself with much principle,
and all his experiences went to prove that even less would suffice, and
that for the purposes of the station he occupied, and the society he
frequented, it was only necessary that he should not transgress in his
dealings with men of a certain rank and condition; so that while every
transaction with people of class and fashion should be strictly on
"the square," he was at perfect liberty to practise any number of sharp
things with all beneath them. It was the old axiom of knight-errantry
adapted to our own century, which made every weapon fair used again