the quarter-deck.  What my intention precisely was in this excursion, I have no notion of now, but I have some very vague idea, that I meant to re-enact the curse of Kehama upon the whole party.  At last I mustered strength to rise; but alas!  I had scarcely reached the standing position, when a tremendous heel of the boat to one side, threw me in the gunwale, and before I was able to recover my balance, a second lurch pitched me headlong into the sea.  I have, thank God, no further recollection of my misfortunes.  When I again became conscious, I found myself wrapped up in a pilot-coat, while my clothes were drying:  the vessel was at anchor in Wexford.  My attached friends had started for town with post-horses, leaving me no less cured of love than aquatics.

“‘The Delight’ passed over in a few days, to some more favoured son of Neptune, and I hid my shame and my misfortunes by a year’s tour on the continent.”

“Although I acknowledge,” said Trevanion, “that hitherto I have reaped no aid from Mr. O’Leary’s narrative, yet I think it is not without a moral.”

“Well, but,” said I, “he has got another adventure to tell us; we have quite time for it, so pray pass the wine and let us have it.”

“I have just finished the burgundy,” said O’Leary, “and if you will ring for another flask, I have no objection to let you hear the story of my second love.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Mr. O’LEARY’S second love.

“You may easily suppose,” began Mr. O’Leary, “that the unhappy termination of my first passion served as a shield to me for a long time against my unfortunate tendencies towards the fair; and such was really the case.  I never spoke to a young lady for three years after, without a reeling in my head, so associated in my mind was love and sea-sickness.  However, at last what will not time do.  It was about four years from the date of this adventure, when I became so, from oblivion of my former failure, as again to tempt my fortune.  My present choice, in every way unlike the last, was a gay, lively girl, of great animal spirits, and a considerable turn for raillery, that spared no one; the members of her own family were not even sacred in her eyes; and her father, a reverend dean, as frequently figured among the ludicrous as his neighbours.

“The Evershams had been very old friends of a rich aunt of mine, who never, by the by, had condescended to notice me till I made their acquaintance; but no sooner had I done so, than she sent for me, and gave me to understand that in the event of my succeeding to the hand of Fanny Eversham, I should be her heir, and the possessor of about sixty thousand pounds.  She did not stop here; but by canvassing the dean in my favour, speedily put the matter on a most favourable footing, and in less than two months I was received as the accepted suitor of the fair Fanny, then one of the reigning belles of Dublin.