Page:Glenarvon (Volume 3).djvu/214

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took his name from out the directory; and though he preserved a faithful silence respecting others, he acknowledged his own errors, and abjured the desperate cause in which he had once so zealously engaged.

The morning before he quitted Ireland, he sent for his cousin Charles de Ruthven, to whom he had already consigned the care of his castles and estates. "If I live to return," he said gaily, "I shall mend my morals, grow marvellous virtuous, marry something better than myself, and live in all the innocent pleasures of connubial felicity. In which case, you will be what you are now, a keen expectant of what never can be your's. If I die, in the natural course of events, all this will fall to your share. Take it now then into consideration: sell, buy, make whatever is for your advantage; but as a draw-back upon the estate, gentle cousin, I bequeath also to your care two children—the one, my trusty Henchman, a love