‘Sinful!’ said my mother, bristling up when her son was attacked; ’sure we’re all sinners; and it’s you, Mr. Jowls, who have given me the inexpressible blessing to let me know that.  But how else would you have had the poor child behave?’

’I would have had the gentleman avoid the drink, and the quarrel, and this wicked duel altogether,’ answered the clergyman.

But my mother cut him short, by saying such sort of conduct might be very well in a person of his cloth and his birth, but it neither became a Brady nor a Barry.  In fact, she was quite delighted with the thought that I had pinked an English marquis’s son in a duel; and so, to console her, I told her of a score more in which I had been engaged, and of some of which I have already informed the reader.

As my late antagonist was in no sort of danger when I spread that report of his perilous situation, there was no particular call that my hiding should be very close.  But the widow did not know the fact as well as I did:  and caused her house to be barricaded, and Becky, her barefooted serving-wench, to be a perpetual sentinel to give alarm, lest the officers should be in search of me.

The only person I expected, however, was my cousin Ulick, who was to bring me the welcome intelligence of Lady Lyndon’s arrival; and I own, after two days’ close confinement at Bray, in which I narrated all the adventures of my life to my mother, and succeeded in making her accept the dresses she had formerly refused, and a considerable addition to her income which I was glad to make, I was very glad when I saw that reprobate Ulick Brady, as my mother called him, ride up to the door in my carriage with the welcome intelligence for my mother, that the young lord was out of danger; and for me, that the Countess of Lyndon had arrived in Dublin.

’And I wish, Redmond, that the young gentleman had been in danger a little longer,’ said the widow, her eyes filling with tears, ’and you’d have stayed so much the more with your poor old mother.’  But I dried her tears, embracing her warmly, and promised to see her often; and hinted I would have, mayhap, a house of my own and a noble daughter to welcome her.

‘Who is she, Redmond dear?’ said the old lady.

‘One of the noblest and richest women in the empire, mother,’ answered I.  ‘No mere Brady this time,’ I added, laughing:  with which hopes I left Mrs. Barry in the best of tempers.

No man can bear less malice than I do; and, when I have once carried my point, I am one of the most placable creatures in the world.  I was a week in Dublin before I thought it necessary to quit that capital.  I had become quite reconciled to my rival in that time; made a point of calling at his lodgings, and speedily became an intimate consoler of his bed-side.  He had a gentleman to whom I did not neglect to be civil, and towards whom I ordered my people to be particular in their attentions; for I was naturally anxious to learn what my Lord George’s position with the lady of Castle Lyndon had really been, whether other suitors were about the widow, and how she would bear the news of his wound.