, too--quite in the vein of our former
intimacy and good feeling, inviting me to their house, and again
professing their willingness that I should be on the terms of our old
familiarity--was little short of wonderful to me. I read, too--with what
pleasure?--that slight mention of my cousin, whom I had so long regarded
as my successful rival, but who I began now to hope had not been
preferred to me. Perhaps it was not yet too late to think that all was
not hopeless. It appeared, too, that several letters had been written
which had never reached me; so, while I accused them of neglect and
forgetfulness, I was really more amenable to the charge myself; for, from
the moment I had heard of my cousin Guy's having been domesticated
amongst them, and the rumours of his marriage had reached me, I suffered
my absurd jealousy to blind my reason, and never wrote another line
after. I ought to have known how "bavarde" [boasting] Guy always was
--that he never met with the most commonplace attentions any where, that
he did not immediately write home about settlements and pin-money, and
portions for younger children, and all that sort of nonsense. Now I saw
it all plainly, and ten thousand times quicker than my hopes were
extinguished before were they again kindled, and I could not refrain
from regarding Lady Jane as a mirror of constancy, and myself the most
fortunate man in Europe. My old castle-building propensities came back
upon me in an instant, and I pictured myself, with Lady Jane as my
companion, wandering among the beautiful scenery of the Neckar, beneath
the lofty ruins of Heidelberg, or skimming the placid surface of the
Rhine, while, "mellowed by distance," came the rich chorus of a
student's melody, filling the air with its flood of song. How
delightful, I thought, to be reading the lyrics of Uhland, or Buerger,
with one so capable of appreciating them, with all the hallowed
associations of the "Vaterland" about us! Yes, said I aloud, repeating
the well-known line of a German "Lied"--

"Bakranzt mit Laub, den lieben vollen Becher."

"Upon my conscience," said Mr. Daly, who had for some time past been in
silent admiration of my stage-struck appearance--"upon my conscience, Mr.
Lorrequer, I had no conception you knew Irish."

The mighty talisman of the Counsellor's voice brought me back in a moment
to a consciousness of where I was then standing, and the still more
fortunate fact that I was only a