Upon the day following, O'Connor had not yet received any answer to his letter. He was, however, not a little surprised instead to receive a second visit from young Ashwoode.
‘I am very glad, my dear O'Connor,’ said the young man as he entered, ‘to have found you alone. I have been wishing very much for this opportunity, and was half afraid as I came upstairs that I should again have been disappointed. The fact is, I wish much to speak to you upon a subject of great difficulty and delicacy—one in which, however, I naturally feel so strong an interest, that I may speak to you upon it, and freely, too, without impertinence. I allude to your attachment to my sister. Do not imagine, my dear O'Connor, that I am going to lecture you on prudence and all that; and above all, my dear fellow, do not think I want to tax your confidence more deeply than you are willing I should; I know quite enough for all I would suggest; I know the plain fact that you love my —I have long known it, and this is enough.’
‘Well, sir, what follows?’ said O'Connor, dejectedly.
‘Do not call me sir—call me friend—fellow—fool—anything you please but that,’ replied Ashwoode, kindly; and after a brief pause, he continued: ‘I need not, and cannot disguise it from you, that I was much opposed to this, and vexed extremely at the girl's encouragement of what I considered a most imprudent suit. I have, however, learned to think differently—very differently. After all my littlenesses and pettishness, for which you must have, if not abhorred, at least despised me from your very heart—after all this, I say, your noble conduct in risking your own life to save my worthless blood is what I never can enough admire, and honour, and thank.’ Here he grasped O'Connor's hand, and shook it warmly. ‘After this, I tell you, O'Connor, that were there offered to me, on my sister's behoof, on the one side the most brilliant alliance in wealth and rank that ever ambition dreamed of, and upon the other side this hand of yours, I
O'Connor could hardly believe his senses. Here was the man who, scarcely six days since, he felt assured, would more readily have suffered him to thrust him through the body than consent to his marriage with Mary Ashwoode, now not merely consenting to it, but offering cordially and spontaneously all the assistance in his power towards effecting that very object. Had he heard him aright? One look at his expressive face—the kindly pressure of his hand—everything assured him that he had justly comprehended all that Ashwoode had spoken, and a glow of hope, warmer than had visited him for years, cheered his heart.
‘In the meantime,’ continued Ashwoode, ‘I must tell you exactly how matters stand at Morley Court. The Earl of Aspenly, of whom you may have heard, is paying his addresses to my sister.’
‘The Earl of Aspenly,’ echoed O'Connor, slightly colouring. ‘I had not heard of this before—she did not name him.’
‘Yet she has known it a good while,’ returned Ashwoode, with well-affected surprise—‘a month, I believe, or more. He's now at Morley Court, and means to make some stay—are you sure she never mentioned him?’
‘Titled, and, of course, rich,’ said O'Connor, scarce hearing the question. ‘Why should I have heard of this by chance, and from another—why this reserve—this silence?’
‘Nay, nay,’ replied Henry, ‘you must not run away with the matter thus. Mary may have forgotten it, or—or not liked to tell you—not cared to give you needless uneasiness.’
‘I wish she had—I wish she had—I am—I am, indeed, Ashwoode, very, very unhappy,’ said O'Connor, with extreme dejection. ‘Forgive me—forgive my folly, since folly it seems—I fear I weary you.’
‘Well, well, since it seems you have not heard of it,’ rejoined Henry, carelessly throwing himself back in his chair, ‘you may as well learn it now—not that there is any real cause of alarm in the matter, as I shall presently show you, but simply that you may understand the position of the enemy. Lord Aspenly, then, is at present at Morley Court, where he is received as Mary's lover—observe me, only as her love—not yet, and I trust never as her accepted lover.’
‘Go on—pray go on,’ said O'Connor, with suppressed but agonized anxiety.
‘Now, though my father is very hot about the match,’ resumed his visitor, ‘it may appear strange enough to you
‘By heavens, it is impossible!’ exclaimed O'Connor, starting to his feet; ‘I cannot believe it; you must, indeed, my dear Ashwoode, you must have been deceived.’
‘Well, then,’ rejoined the young man, ‘I have lost my skill in reading young ladies' minds—that's all; but even though I should be right—and never believe me if I am not right—it does not follow that the giddy whim won't pass away just as suddenly as it came; her most lasting impressions—with, I should hope, one exception—were never very enduring. I have been talking to her for nearly half an hour this morning—laughing with her about Lord Aspenly's suit, and building castles in the air about what she will and what she won't do when she's a countess. But, by the way, how did you let her know that you intend returning to France at the end of this month, only, as she told me, however, for a few weeks? She mentioned it yesterday incidentally. Well, it is a comfort that I hear your secrets, though you won't entrust them to me. But do not, my dear fellow—do not look so very black—you very much overrate the firmness of women's minds, and greatly indeed exaggerate that of my sister's character if you believe that this vexatious whim which has entered her giddy pate will remain there longer than a week. The simple fact is that the excitement and bustle of all this has produced an unusual flow of high spirits, which will, of course, subside with the novelty of the occasion. Pshaw! why so cast down?—there is
‘Well,’ thought he, as he threw his leg across his high-bred gelding at the inn door, ‘I have shot the first shaft home.’
And so he had, for the heart at which it was directed, unfenced by suspicion, lay open to his traitorous practices. O'Connor's letter, an urgent and a touching one, was still unanswered; it never for a moment crossed his mind that it had not reached the hand for which it was intended. The maid who had faithfully delivered all the letters which had passed between them had herself received it; and young Ashwoode had but the moment before mentioned, from his sister's lips, the subject on which it was written—his meditated departure for France. This, too, it appeared, she had spoken of in the midst of gay and light-hearted trifling, and projects of approaching magnificence and dissipation with his rich and noble rival. Twice since the delivery of that letter had his servant seen Miss Ashwoode's maid; and in the communicative colloquy which had ensued she had told—no doubt according to well-planned instructions—how gay and unusually merry her mistress was, and how she passed whole hours at her toilet, and the rest of her time in the companionship of Lord Aspenly—so that between his lordship's society, and her own preparations for it, she had scarcely allowed herself time to read the letter in question, much less to answer it.
All these things served to fill O'Connor's mind with, vague but agonizing doubts—doubts which he vainly strove to combat; fears which had not their birth in an alarmed imagination, but which, alas! were but too surely approved by reason. The notion of a systematic plot, embracing so many agents, and conducted with such deep and hellish hypocrisy, with the sole purpose of destroying affections the most beautiful, and of alienating hearts the truest, was a thought so monstrous and unnatural that it never for a second flashed upon his mind; still his heart struggled strongly against despair. Spite of all that looked gloomy in what he saw—spite of the boding suggestions of his worst fears, he would not believe her false to him—that she who had so long and so well loved and trusted him—she whose gentle heart he knew unchanged and unchilled by years, and distance, and