Fanny struck a few notes of a wild and peculiar symphony, and sang her sister's favourite.
You ask the dearest place on earth, Whose simple joys can never die; 'T is the holy pale of the happy hearth, Where love doth light each beaming eye. With snowy shroud Let tempests loud Around my old tower raise their din;-- What boots the shout Of storms without, While voices sweet resound within? O dearer sound For the tempests round, The voices sweet within!
I ask not wealth, I ask not power; But, gracious Heaven, oh grant to me That, when the storms of Fate may lower, My heart just like my home may be! When in the gale Poor Hope's white sail No haven can for shelter win, Fate's darkest skies The heart defies Whose still small voice is sweet within O, heavenly sound, 'Mid the tempests round, That voice so sweet within!
Egan had entered as Fanny was singing the second verse; he wore a troubled air, which his wife at first did not remark. "Is not that a sweet song, Edward?" said she. "No one ought to like it more than you, for your home is your happiness, and no one has a clearer conscience."
Egan kissed her gently, and thanked her for her good opinion, and asked her what she wished to say to him. They left the room.
Fanny remarked Egan's unusually troubled air, and it marred her music; leaving the piano, and walking to the window, she saw Larry Hogan walking from the house, down the avenue.
If the morning brought uneasiness and distrust to Merryvale, it dawned not more brightly on Neck-or-Nothing Hall. The discord of the former night was not preparatory to harmony on the morrow, and the parties separating in ill-humour from the drawing-room were not likely to look forward with much pleasure to the breakfast-parlour. But before breakfast sleep was to intervene--that is, for those who could get it--and the unfortunate Furlong was not amongst the number. Despite the very best feather bed Mrs. O'Grady had selected for him from amongst her treasures, it was long before slumber weighed down his feverish eyelids; and even then, it was only to have them opened again in some convulsive start of a troubled dream. All his adventures of the last four-and-twenty hours were jumbled together in strange confusion--now on a lonely road, while dreading the assaults of robbers, his course was interrupted not by a highwayman, but a river, whereon embarking, he began to catch salmon in a most surprisingly rapid manner, but just as he was about to haul in his fish it escaped from the hook, and the salmon, making wry faces at him, very impertinently exclaimed, "Sure, you wouldn't catch a poor, ignorant, Irish salmon?" He then snapped his pistols at the insolent fish--then his carriage breaks down, and he is suddenly transferred from the river to the road; thieves seize upon him and bind his hands, but a charming young lady with pearly teeth frees him from his bonds, and conducts him to a castle where a party is engaged in playing cards; he is invited to join, and as his cards are dealt to him he anticipates triumph in the game, but by some malicious fortune his trumps are transformed into things of no value, as they touch the board; he loses his money, and is kicked out when his purse has been emptied, and he escapes along a dark road pursued by his spoilers, who would take his life, and a horrid cry of "broiled bones," rings in his ears as he flies; he is seized and thrown into a river, where, as he sinks, shoals of salmon raise a chorus of rejoicing, and he wakes out of the agonies of dream-drowning to find himself nearly suffocated by sinking into the feathery depths of Mrs. O'Grady's pet bed. After a night passed in such troubled visions the unfortunate Furlong awoke unrefreshed, and, with bitter recollections of the past and mournful anticipations of the future, arose and prepared to descend to the parlour, where a servant told him breakfast was ready.