After such leave-takings, especially where something like a revelation takes place, there sometimes supervenes, I’m told, a sort of excitement before the chill and ache of separation sets in. So, Lily, when she went home, found that her music failed her, all but the one strange little air, ‘The river ran between them;’ and then she left the harpsichord and went into the garden through the glass door, but the flowers had only half their interest, and the garden was solitary, and she felt restless, as if she were going to make a journey, or looking for strange news; and then she bethought her again of Mrs. Colonel Stafford, that she might have by this time returned from Dublin, and there was some little interest about the good old lady, even in this, that she had just returned by the same road that he had gone away by, that she might have chanced to see him as he passed; that at least she might happen to speak of him, and to know something of the likelihood of his return, or even to speculate about him; for now any talk in which his name occurred was interesting, though she did not know it quite herself. So she went down to the King’s House, and did find old Mrs. Stafford at home: and after an entertaining gossip about some ‘rich Nassau damask,’ at Haughton’s in the Coombe, that had taken her fancy mightily, and how she had chosen a set of new Nankeen plates and fine oblong dishes at the Music Hall, and how Peter Raby, the watchman, was executed yesterday morning, in web worsted breeches, for the murder of Mr. Thomas Fleming, of Thomas-street, she did come at last to mention Devereux: and she said that the colonel had received a letter from General Chattesworth, ‘who by-the-bye,’ and then came a long parenthesis, very pleasant, you may be sure, for Lily to listen to; and the general, it appeared, thought it most likely that Devereux would not return to Chapelizod, and the Royal Irish Artillery; and then she went on to other subjects, and Lily staid a long time, thinking she might return to Devereux, but she did not mention him again. So home went little Lily more pensive than she came.

It was near eight o’clock, when who should arrive at the door, and flutter the crows in the old elms with an energetic double knock, but Aunt Rebecca, accompanied by no less a personage than Dr. Toole in full costume, and attended by old Dominick, the footman.

The doctor was a little bit ruffled and testy, for having received a summons from Belmont, he had attended in full blow, expecting to prescribe for Aunt Rebecca or Miss Gertrude, and found, instead, that he was in for a barren and benevolent walk of half a mile on the Inchicore road, with the energetic Miss Rebecca, to visit one of her felonious pensioners who lay sick in his rascally crib. It was not the first time that the jolly little doctor had been entrapped by the good lady into a purely philanthropic excursion of this kind. But he could not afford to mutiny, and vented his disgust in blisters and otherwise drastic treatment of the malingering scoundrels whom he served out after his kind for the trouble and indignity they cost him.

‘And here we are, Lily dear, on our way to see poor dear Pat Doolan, who, I fear, is not very long for this world. Dominick!— he’s got a brain fever, my dear.’

The doctor said ‘pish!’ inaudibly, and Aunt Becky went on.

‘You know the unhappy creature is only just out of prison, and if ever mortal suffered unjustly, he’s the man. Poor Doolan’s as innocent as you or I, my dear, or sweet little Spot, there;’ pointing her fan like a pistol at that interesting quadruped’s head. ‘The disgrace has broken his heart, and that’s at the bottom of his sickness. I wish you could hear him speak, poor dear wretch — Dominick!’ and she had a word for that domestic in the hall.

‘Hear him speak, indeed!’ said Toole, taking advantage of her momentary absence. ‘I wish you could, the drunken blackguard. King Solomon could not make sense of it. She gave that burglar, would you believe it, Ma’am? two guineas, by Jupiter: the first of this mon............