fore, if I test your kindness too severely; and remember, you have in fact courted the position you occupy. If my recital weary, it may also warn you; and if I lose your respect, I must beg none the less—your pity.”
I assured him of my sympathy beforehand.
“Your patience first, then,” he said.
CHAPTER II.
“My name is Lane Daly. I am of the Dalys of Fermoy, a good family, but sadly impoverished, like many another Irish house, by prolonged improvidence. I was a younger son, and as a consequence inherited little more than a foolish pride, a monstrous pedigree, and that phantom property, a contingent interest in an over-encumbered estate. Yet these were excuses enough to keep an Irishman from industry. I was never trained to any profession. I seemed forbidden to toil for my bread. I was brought up with independent notions without independent means. I received an accidental education at a Jesuit college in the neighbourhood of the family estate. Then, as a young man, a brief career of life in Dublin, where I acquired little beyond the science of debt, and I came to London fortune seeking. I had name and connections although I had not money, and moreover every Irishman has some one above him in station whom he looks up to and expects to get something from. A promise is the general result—another word for a lie—it was all I ever got. I, with others, dangled attendance at a great man’s levée, in the hope of advancement I never received. He was one of those old-established mockeries—a man who seemed a patron and arrogated to himself the airs of one, without ever doing a single action to merit the title. I am speaking of years long past. I was a young man then. I am not now so old as you perhaps deem me. I am now little more than forty-five, though I am aware I seem older. I was young, and as a necessary adjunct to youth and poverty—came love.
“The family of the Moncktons have been, as you are doubtless aware, for many years distinguished in the commercial history of this country for their enormous wealth and influence. The late Sir John Monckton had one daughter—Margaret. Of her exquisite beauty I will spare both of us elaborate description. Here is her portrait, painted about the date of my first meeting with her, by a French artist of some fame. Judge for yourself.”
He took from his breast-pocket a morocco-leather miniature case, and handed it to me. It enclosed the portrait of a woman, certainly of great beauty. For some minutes the charming expression of innocence and contemplative purity depicted in the miniature, held me spell-bound. Then I closed the case and returned it to him, motioning my thanks.
“In mind,” he went on, “she was not less excellent. And here I should state,—you know me so slightly, it is necessary,—that not one thought of the wealth she was likely one day to inherit, ever tainted the truthfulness of my love for Margaret Monckton. I believe that had I met her even in the very humblest position I should not have loved her less. I had frequent opportunities of seeing her. I was admitted to her father’s house, and received there as a constant and welcome guest. That the cadet of a needy Irish family should aspire to the hand of an English heiress, was looked upon as a danger too absurd to be apprehended. So my love grew and swelled unchecked within me, until my surcharged heart broke down beneath the burthen. My passion would find its way into words. I betrayed myself. You can guess the result. The door of Sir John Monckton’s house was thenceforth for ever closed against me. My only sins were my poverty and my love. But how unpardonable are these in a rich man’s eyes!
“The father of Margaret had views of his own in relation to his daughter’s hand. There were other matters besides the happiness of his child to be considered. What could be more important than strengthening his political connections, than enlarging the arena of his commercial pursuits? He had decided upon the marriage of his daughter with a General Galton, a man of high family and great wealth, who had returned from an important colonial appointment to marry and be buried in his native land. Obedience is a nobler virtue than love—the conviction cannot be too soon grafted into the heart of a child. Filial piety is rightly held in high esteem: it has a happy tendency to promote parental profit! How many Englishmen, do you think, champions of liberty abroad, are yet the most cruel of tyrants at home, preying upon their children’s joys, weighing their hearts but as fathers in the scale against political advancement and sordid ambition?”
He spoke with violence, and then paused for some minutes, as though overcome with his exertion.
“She loved me,” he continued, in a low voice, and speaking slowly and with effort. “Yet she prepared to obey her father’s commands. There was something touching, it was too pitiable to be condemned, in her compliance with a bidding which was breaking her heart. In the interval between my dismissal and the final arrangement of her marriage, I had written to her beseeching an interview. Trembling, for it was the first time she had acted wilfully in opposition to her father, she granted my request. Our meeting was a strange mingling of happiness and suffering—vows of love and outbursts of regret. In vain did we attempt to rend the ties that united us. Each interview dedicated to the interchange of eternal adieux, ended in an arrangement for a further meeting. I saw her again and again. Sir John Monckton resided in one of those houses in St. James’s Place, the gardens of which run down to the Green Park. A place of meeting was beneath a lime-tree, in a secluded part of the enclosure. Margaret had free access to the park in the early part of the morning, and by indentations on the bark of the tree, she was enabled to indicate to me the hour at which she could probaby escape from her father’s house for a meeting in the evening—the garden wall being so low that she could descend from it into the park, or return thence, without difficulty or much fear of detection.
“What hours of happiness did we pass in the