“Well, Ned, my boy,” said old Sam, turning to Sir Edward, after having been introduced to his mother, “I hope I haven’t lost a son to-day, although your mother gained one?”

“I would be unworthy of my good fortune, if you did,” replied Sir Edward.  “Whilst I have life and sense and memory I shall ever look upon you as my father, and my best friend.”

“Eight,” replied the old soldier; “but I knew it was before you.  He was no everyday plant, my lady, and so I told my Beck.  Your ladyship must see my Beck,” he added; “she’s the queen of wives, and I knew it from the first day I married her; my heart told me so, and it was all right—­all the heart of man.”

The unfortunate old Doctor was to be pitied.  He walked about with his finger in his book, scarcely knowing whether what he had seen and heard was a dream, or a reality.  Seeing Lord Dunroe about to take his departure, he approached him, and said, “Pray, sir, are we to have no dejeuner after all?  Are not you the young gentleman who was this day found out—­discovered?”

Dunroe was either so completely absorbed in the contemplation of his ill fortune, that he did not hear him, or he would not deign him an answer.

“This is really too bad,” continued the Doctor; “neither a marriage fee nor a dejeuner!  Too bad, indeed!  Here are the tribulations, but not the marriage; under which melancholy circumstances I may as well go on my way, although I cannot do it as I expected to have done—­rejoicing.  Good morning, Mr. Stoker.”

Our readers ought to be sufficiently acquainted, we presume, with the state of Lucy’s feelings after the events of the day and the disclosures that had been made.  Sir Thomas Gourlay—­we may as well call him so for the short time he will be on the stage—­stunned—­crushed—­wrecked—­ ruined, was instantly obliged to go to bed.  The shock sustained by his system, both physically and mentally, was terrific in its character, and fearful in its results.  His incoherency almost amounted to frenzy.  He raved—­he stormed—­he cursed—­he blasphemed; but amidst this dark tumult of thought and passion, there might ever be observed the prevalence of the monster evil—­the failure of his ambition for his daughter’s elevation to the rank of a countess.  Never, indeed, was there such a tempest of human passion at work in a brain as raged in his.

“It’s a falsehood, I didn’t murder my son,” he raved; “or if I did, what care I about that?  I am a man of steel.  My daughter—­my daughter was my thought.  Well, Dunroe, all is right at last—­eh? ha—­ha—­ha!  I managed it; but I knew my system was the right one.  Lady Dunroe!—­very good, very good to begin with; but not what I wish to see, to hear, to feel before I die.  Nurse me, now, if I died without seeing her Countess of Cullamore, but I’d break my heart.  ’Make way, there—­way for the Countess of Cullamore!’—­ha! does not that sound well?  But then, the old Earl!  Curse him, what keeps him on the stage so long?