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This appeared to be a chance which might not again present itself: and he gladly consented to accompany Rainscourt in his excursion. After an absence of three weeks they returned. The castle had been fitted out in a style of lavish expenditure and taste, and Rainscourt could find little to improve or add.
During her stay in London, Rainscourt occasionally paid his respects, behaved with great kindness and propriety, and appeared not a little proud of the expanding beauty of his daughter. Mrs Rainscourt not only recovered her spirits, but her personal attractions; and their numerous acquaintance wondered what could possess Mr Rainscourt to be indifferent to so lively and so charming a woman.
Mrs Rainscourt waited until she found that she must either give vent to her feelings by words, or that her whole frame would explode; and the action commenced on her side with a shower of tears, which ended in violent hysterics. The first were unheeded by her husband, who always considered them as a kind of scaling her guns previous to an engagement; but the hysterics rather baffled him.
Thus he passes his existence in sinning, repenting, and sinning again, in search of "something new." When Mr Rainscourt was first separated from his wife, he felt himself released from a heavy burthen, which had oppressed him for years; or as if fetters, which had been long riveted, had been knocked off; and he congratulated himself upon his regained liberty.
The operation was continued, and fortunately had just been finished when the valet resumed, "Et rappelez-vous Monsieur le Vicaire de . Il est arrive hier au soir, on a visit to Mr McElvina." "The devil he is?" replied Rainscourt, springing from his chair, at the corroborating incident to his previous ground of alarm. The astonished countenance of the valet restored the master to his senses.
"Well," said Rainscourt, hastily, "have you procured what we were talking of?" "I have indeed; but " "No buts, Norah, or we part for ever. Where is it? Who is with him?" "One of the women. I tould her I would nurse him after daylight." "When does he take his fever draughts?" "Every two hours Och hone, he'll take but one more. So young, and so beautiful, too."
When Mr Rainscourt left Cheltenham, he wrote a hasty note to the McElvinas, requesting that they would take charge of Emily, whose presence would be necessary at the Hall and, when they had arranged their own affairs, would bring her with them over to Ireland, where it was his intention to reside for some time.
The next day, Mrs Rainscourt went to the cottage alone, and having requested Susan to exclude all visitors, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances which had occurred previous to her separation from her husband, and the decision that she was now called upon to make, from his importunity.
I am aware that I now have a fair opportunity of inserting a most interesting conversation, full of ohs and ahs, dears and sweets, etcetera, which would be much relished by all misses of seventeen, or thereabouts; but as I do not write novels for them, and the young couple have no secrets to which the reader is not already a party, I shall leave them to imagine the explanation, with all its concomitant retrospections and anticipations, softened with tears and sweetened with kisses; and, as the plot now thickens, change the scene to the dressing-room of Rainscourt, who had now just risen, at his usual hour, viz., between two and three in the afternoon.
Unfortunately, in his hurry, instead of inserting the knife on the inside of the lace, so as to cut to him, he cut down upon it, and not meeting with the resistance which he expected, the point of the knife entered with no trifling force into the back of Mrs Rainscourt, who, to his astonishment, immediately started on her legs, crying, "Would you murder me, Mr Rainscourt? help, help!"
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