’Ah, Barry, you know well enough that I have never loved but you!  Was I ever so wretched that a kind word from you did not make me happy! ever so angry, but the least offer of goodwill on your part did not bring me to your side?  Did I not give a sufficient proof of my affection for you, in bestowing one of the first fortunes in England upon you?  Have I repined or rebuked you for the way you have wasted it?  No, I loved you too much and too fondly; I have always loved you.  From the first moment I saw you, I felt irresistibly attracted towards you.  I saw your bad qualities, and trembled at your violence; but I could not help loving you.  I married you, though I knew I was sealing my own fate in doing so; and in spite of reason and duty.  What sacrifice do you want from me?  I am ready to make any, so you will but love me; or, if not, that at least you will gently use me.’

I was in a particularly good humour that day, and we had a sort of reconciliation:  though my mother, when she heard the speech, and saw me softening towards her Ladyship, warned me solemnly, and said, ’Depend on it, the artful hussy has some other scheme in her head now.’  The old lady was right; and I swallowed the bait which her Ladyship had prepared to entrap me as simply as any gudgeon takes a hook.

I had been trying to negotiate with a man for some money, for which I had pressing occasion; but since our dispute regarding the affair of the succession, my Lady had resolutely refused to sign any papers for my advantage:  and without her name, I am sorry to say, my own was of little value in the market, and I could not get a guinea from any money-dealer in London or Dublin.  Nor could I get the rascals from the latter place to visit me at Castle Lyndon:  owing to that unlucky affair I had with Lawyer Sharp when I made him lend me the money he brought down, and old Salmon the Jew being robbed of the bond I gave him after leaving my house, [Footnote:  These exploits of Mr. Lyndon are not related in the narrative.  He probably, in the cases above alluded to, took the law into his own hands.] the people would not trust themselves within my walls any more.  Our rents, too, were in the hands of receivers by this time, and it was as much as I could do to get enough money from the rascals to pay my wine-merchants their bills.  Our English property, as I have said, was equally hampered; and, as often as I applied to my lawyers and agents for money, would come a reply demanding money of me, for debts and pretended claims which the rapacious rascals said they had on me.

It was, then, with some feelings of pleasure that I got a letter from my confidential man in Gray’s Inn, London, saying (in reply to some ninety-ninth demand of mine) that he thought he could get me some money; and inclosing a letter from a respectable firm in the city of London, connected with the mining interest, which offered to redeem the incumbrance in taking a long lease of certain property of ours, which was