Having dressed, he ordered his horse, and rode out to the Phoenix Park, accompanied by his shadow, Norton, who had returned, and heard with much mirth a full history of the interview, with a glowing description of the stand which Dunroe made for himself.

CHAPTER XXX.  A Courtship on Novel Principles.

Having stated that Sir Thomas Gourlay requested Dunroe to postpone an interview with Lucy until her health should become reestablished, we feel it necessary to take a glance at the kind of life the unfortunate girl led from the day she made the sacrifice until that at which we have arrived in this narrative.  Since that moment of unutterable anguish her spirits completely abandoned her.  Naturally healthy she had ever been, but now she began to feel what the want of it meant; a feeling which to her, as the gradual precursor of death, and its consequent release from sorrow, brought something like hope and consolation.  Yet this was not much; for we know that to the young heart entering upon the world of life and enjoyment, the prospect of early dissolution, no matter by what hopes or by what resignation supported, is one so completely at variance with the mysterious gift of existence and the natural tenacity with which we cling to it, that, like the drugs which we so reluctantly take during illness, its taste upon the spirit is little else than bitterness itself.  Lucy’s appetite failed her; she could not endure society, but courted solitude, and scarcely saw any one, unless, indeed, her father occasionally, and her maid Alley Mahon, when her attendance was necessary.  She became pale as a shadow, began to have a wasted appearance, and the very fountains of her heart seemed to have dried up, for she found it impossible to shed a tear.  A dry, cold, impassive agony, silent, insidious, and exhausting, appeared to absorb the very elements of life, and reduce her to a condition of such physical and morbid incapacity as to feel an utter inability, or at all events disinclination, to complain.

Her father’s interviews with her were not frequent.  That worthy man, however, looked upon all her sufferings as the mere pinings of a self-willed girl, lovesick and sentimental, such as he had sometimes heard of, or read in books, and only worthy to be laughed at and treated with contempt.  He himself was now progressing in an opposite direction, so far as health was concerned, to that of his daughter.  In other words, as she got ill, he gradually, and with a progress beautifully adapted to the accomplishment of his projects, kept on recovering.  This fact was Lucy’s principal, almost her sole consolation; for here, although she had sacrificed herself, she experienced the satisfaction of seeing that the sacrifice was not in vain.