Away with the old carrion!—­away with him!  But what was that that happened to-day, or yesterday?  Misery, torture, perdition!—­disgraced, undone, ruined!  Is it true, though?  Is this joy?  I expected—­I feared something like this.  Will no one tell me what has happened?  Here, Lucy—­Countess of Cullamore!—­where are you?  Now, Lucy, now—­put your heel on them—­grind them, my girl—­remember the cold and distrustful looks your father got from the world—­especially from those of your own sex—­remember it all, now, Lucy—­Countess of Cullamore, I mean—­remember it, I say, my lady, for your father’s sake.  Now, my girl, for pride; now for the haughty sneer; now for the aristocratic air of disdain; now for the day of triumph over the mob of the great vulgar.  And that fellow—­that reverend old shark who would eat any one of his Christian brethren, if they were only sent up to him disguised as a turbot—­the divine old lobster, for his thin red nose is a perfect claw—­the divine old lobster couldn’t tell me whether there was a God or not.  Curse him, not he; but hold, I must not be too severe upon him:  his god is his belly, and mine was my ambition.  Oh, oh! what is this—­what does it all mean?  What has happened to me?  Oh, I am ill, I fear:  perhaps I am mad.  Is the Countess there—­the Countess of Cullamore, I mean?”

Many of his subsequent incoherencies were still more violent and appalling, and sometimes he would have got up and committed acts of outrage, if he had not been closely watched and restrained by force.  Whether his complaint was insanity or brain fever, or the one as symptomatic of the other, even his medical attendants could scarcely determine.  At all events, whatever medical skill and domestic attention could do for him was done, but with very little hopes of success.

The effect of the scene which the worn and invalid Earl had witnessed at Sir Thomas Gourlay’s were so exhausting to his weak frame that they left very little strength behind them.  Yet he complained of no particular illness; all he felt was, an easy but general and certain decay of his physical powers, leaving the mind and intellect strong and clear.  On the day following the scene in the baronet’s house, we must present him to the reader seated, as usual—­for he could not be prevailed upon to keep his bed—­in his arm-chair, with the papers of the day before him.  Near him, on another seat, was Sir Edward Gourlay.

“Well, Sir Edward, the proofs, you say, have been all satisfactory.”

“Perfectly so, my lord,” replied the young baronet; “we did not allow yesterday to close without making everything clear.  We have this morning had counsel’s opinion upon it, and the proof is considered decisive.”

“But is Lady Emily herself aware of your attachment?”

“Why, my lord,” replied Sir Edward, blushing a little, “I may say I think that—­ahem!—­she has, in some sort, given—­a—­ahem!—­a kind of consent that I should speak to your lordship on the subject.’