These high and mighty names only made me sigh heartily, and she seemed at once to read all that was passing within me.
"I see what it is," said she, with deep emotion; "you are growing weary of me. You are beginning to regret the noble chivalry, the generous devotion you had shown me. You are asking yourself, 'What am I to her? Why should she cling to me?' Cruel question--of a still more cruel answer! But go, sir, return to your family, and leave me if you will to those heartless courtiers who mete out their sympathies by a sovereign's smiles, and only bestow their pity when royalty commands it; and yet, before we part forever, let me here, on my bended knees, thank and bless--" I can't do it, Tom; I can't write it. I find I am blubbering away just as badly as when the scene occurred. Blue eyes half swimming in tears, silky-brown ringlets, and a voice broken by sobs, are shamefully unfair odds against an Irish gentleman on the shady side of fifty-two or three.
It 's all very well for you--sitting quietly at your turf fire--with an old sleepy spaniel snoring on the hearth-rug, and nothing younger in the house than Mrs. Shea, your late wife's aunt--to talk about "My time of life"--"Grownup daughters"--and so on. "He scoffs at wounds who never felt a scar." The fact is, I 'm not a bit more susceptible than other people; I even think I am less yielding--less open to soft influences than many of my acquaintances. I can answer for it, I never found that the strongest persuasions of a tax-gatherer disposed me to look favorably on "county cess, or a rate-in-aid." Even the priest acknowledges me a tough subject on the score of Easter dues and offerings. If I know anything about my own nature, it is that I have rather a casuistic, hair-splitting kind of way with me,--the very reverse of your soft, submissive, easily seduced fellows. I was always known as the obstinate juryman at our assizes, that preferred starvation and a cart to a glib verdict like the others. I am not sure that anybody ever found it an easy task to convince me about anything, except, perhaps, Mrs. D., and then, Tom, it was not precisely "conviction,"--_that_ was something else.
I think I have now made out a sufficient defence of myself, and I'll not make the lawyer's blunder of proving too much. Give me the same latitude that is always conceded to great men when their actions will not square with their previous sentiments. Think of the Duke and Sir Robert, and be merciful to Kenny Dodd.