Whilst uttering the last words, the affectionate creature’s eyes filled with tears.  She rose, however, and having assisted Lucy to her sleeping-room, helped to undress her, then fixed her with tender assiduity in her bed, where, in a few minutes, exhaustion and anxiety of mind were for the time forgotten, and she fell asleep.

The penetration of servants, in tracing, at fashionable parties, the emotions of love through all its various garbs and disguises, constitutes a principal and not the least disagreeable portion of their duty.  The history of Lady Emily’s attachment to Ensign Roberts, though a profound secret to the world, in the opinion of the parties themselves, and only hoped for and suspected by each, was nevertheless perfectly well known by a good number of the quality below stairs.  The circumstance, at all events, as detailed by Alley, was one which in this instance justified their sagacity.  Roberts and she had met, precisely as Alley said, three or four times at Lady Gourlay’s and the Dean’s, where their several attractions were, in fact, the theme of some observation.  Those long, conscious glances, however, which, on the subject of love are such traitors to the heart, by disclosing its most secret operations, had sufficiently well told them the state of everything within that mysterious little garrison, and the natural result was that Lady Emily seldom thought of any one or anything but Ensign Roberts and the aforesaid glances, nor Mr. Roberts of anything but hers; for it so happened, that, with the peculiar oversight in so many things by which the passion is characterized, Lady Emily forgot that she had herself been glancing at the ensign, or she could never have observed and interpreted his looks.  With a similar neglect of his own offences, in the same way must we charge Mr. Roberts, who in his imagination saw nothing but the blushing glances of this fair patrician.

Time went on, however, and Lucy, so far from recovering, was nearly one-half of the week confined to her bed, or her apartment.  Sometimes, by way of varying the scene, and, if possible, enlivening her spirits, she had forced herself to go down to the drawing-room, and occasionally to take an airing in the carriage.  A fortnight had elapsed, and yet neither Norton nor his fellow-traveler had returned from France.  Neither had Mr. Birney; and our friend the stranger had failed to get any possible intelligence of unfortunate Fenton, whom he now believed to have perished, either by foul practices or the influence of some intoxicating debauch.  Thanks to Dandy Dulcimer, however, as well as to Alley Mahon, he was not without information concerning Lucy’s state of health; and, unfortunately, all that he could hear about it was only calculated to depress and distract him.

Dandy came to him one morning, about this period, and after rubbing his head slightly with the tips of his fingers, said,

“Bedad, sir, I was very near havin’ cotch the right Mrs. Norton yestherday—­I mane, I thought I was.”