upon deck. This she used as a place of retreat from the sun during the day, and as a resting-place at night. For want of more interesting companions, she invited us, during the day, into her coach; and we taxed our abilities to make ourselves as entertaining as we could; for we were greatly fascinated by the lady's beauty. The second night proved very sultry; and Lord Westport and myself, suffering from the oppression of the cabin, left our berths, and lay, wrapped up in cloaks, upon deck. Having talked for some hours, we were both on the point of falling asleep, when a stealthy tread near our heads awoke us. It was starlight; and we traced between ourselves and the sky the outline of a man's figure. Lying upon a mass of tarpaulins, we were ourselves undistinguishable, and the figure moved in the direction of the coach. Our first thought was to raise an alarm, scarcely doubting that the purpose of the man was to rob the unprotected lady of her watch or purse. But, to our astonishment, we saw the coach-door silently swing open under a touch from within. All was as silent as a dream; the figure entered, the door closed, and we were left to interpret the case as we might. Strange it was that this lady could permit herself to calculate upon absolute concealment in such circumstances. We recollected afterwards to have heard some indistinct rumour buzzed about the packet on the day preceding, that a gentleman, and some even spoke of him by name as a Colonel for some unknown purpose, was concealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicated that the affair was not entirely a secret even amongst the lady's servants. To both of us the story proclaimed a moral already sufficiently current-viz., that women of the highest and the very lowest rank are alike thrown too much into situations of danger and temptation.

I might mention some additional circumstances of criminal aggravation in this lady's case; but, as they would tend to point out the real person to those acquainted with her history, I shall forbear. She has since made a noise in the world, and has maintained, I believe, a tolerably fair reputation. Soon after sunrise the next morning, a heavenly morning of June, we dropped our anchor in the famous bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm: the sea was like a lake; and, as we were some miles from the Pigeon-House, a boat was manned to put us on shore. The lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to her guilty secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and hardly less innocent than an angel. Long afterwards, Lord Westport and I met her, hanging upon the arm of her husband, a manly and good-natured man, of polished manners, to whom she introduced us: for she voluntarily challenged us as her fellow-voyagers, and, I suppose, had no suspicion which pointed in our direction. She even joined her husband in cordially pressing us to visit them at their magnificent chateau. Upon us, meantime, whatever might be her levity, the secret of which accident had put us in possession pressed with a weight of awe; we shuddered at our own discovery; and we both agreed to drop no hint of it in any direction.*

* Lord Westport's age at that time was the same as my own-that is, we both wanted a few months of being fifteen. But I had the advantage, perhaps, in thoughtfulness and observation of life. Being thoroughly free, however, from opinionativeness, Lord Westport readily came over to any views of mine for which I could show sufficient grounds. And on this occasion I found no difficulty in convincing him-that honour and fidelity did not form sufficient guarantees for the custody of secrets. Presence of mind sc as to revive one's obligations in time, tenacity of recol lection, and vigilance over one's own momentary slips of tongue, so as to keep watch over indirect disclosures, are also requisite. And at that

Landing about three miles from Dublin (according to my present remembrance, at Dunleary), we were not long in reaching Sackville Street.

time I had an instance within my own remembrance where a secret had been betrayed by a person of undoubted honour, but most inadvertently betrayed, and in pure oblivion of his engagement to silence. Indeed, unless where the secret is of a nature to affect some person's life, I do not believe that most people would remember beyond a period of two years the most solemn obligations to secresy. After a lapse of time, varying of course with the person, the substance of the secret will remain upon the mind: but how he came by the secret, or under what circumstances, he will very probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely upon the most religious or sacramental obligation to secresy, unless, together with the secret, you could transfer also a magic ring that should, by a growing pressure or puncture, sting a man into timely alarm and warning.

CHAPTER VIII,

DUBLIN'

IN Sackville Street stood the town-house of Lord Altamont; and here, in the breakfast-room, we found the earl seated. Long and intimately as I had known Lord Westport, it so happened that I had never seen his father, who had, indeed, of late almost pledged himself to a continued residence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an agricultural improver; whilst for his son, under the difficulties and delays at that time of all travelling, any residence whatever in England seemed preferable, but especially a residence with his mother amongst the relatives of his distinguished English grandfather, and in such close neighbourhood to Eton. Lord Altamont once told me, that the journey outward and inward between Eton and Westport, taking into account all the unavoidable deviations from the direct route, in compliance with the claims of kinship, &c. (a case which in Ireland forced a traveller often into a perpetual zig-zag), counted up to something more than a thousand miles. That is, in effect, when valued in loss of time, and allowance being made for the want of continuity in those parts of the travelling system that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less

than one entire fortnight must be annually sunk upon a labour that yielded no commensurate fruit. Hence the long three-years interval which had separated father and son: and hence my own nervous apprehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that I should unavoidably lay a freezing restraint upon that re-union to which, after such a separation, both father and son must have looked forward with anticipation so anxious. Such cases of unintentional intrusion are at times inevitable; but, even to the least sensitive, they are always distressing; most of all they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels himself in the odd position of a criminal without a crime. He is in the situation of one who might have happened to be chased by a Bengal tiger (or, say that the tiger were a sheriff's-officer) into the very centre of the Eleusinian mysteries. Do not tease me, my reader, by alleging that there were no sheriff's-officers at Athens or Eleusis. Not many, I admit: but perhaps quite as many as there were of Bengal tigers. In such a case, under whatever compulsion, the man has violated a holy seclusion. He has seen that which he ought not to have seen; and he is viewed with horror by the privileged spectators. Should he plead that this was his misfortune, and not his fault, the answer would be-" True: it was your misfortune; we know it; and it is our misfortune to be under the necessity of hating you for it." But there was no cause for similar fears at present: so uniformly considerate in his kindness was Lord Altamont. It is true, that Lord Westport, as an only child, and a child to be proud of-for he was at that time rather handsome, and conciliated general goodwill by his engaging manners-was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a