"You love him then?" I cried, bitterly.
"No, no," she said, agitatedly, "no, you do me wrong. I--I--cannot
explain myself. My father!--the Lady Dowager Sackville--the estate
of Sackville--the borough--my uncle, Fitzroy Somerset. Ah! what am
I saying? Forgive me. O Terence," she said, as her beautiful head
sank on my shoulder, "you know not what I suffer!"
I seized her hand and covered it with passionate kisses. But the
high-bred English girl, recovering something of her former hauteur,
said hastily, "Leave me, leave me, but promise!"
"I promise," I replied, enthusiastically; "I WILL spare his life!"
"Thanks, Terence,--thanks!" and disengaging her hand from my lips
she rode rapidly away.
The next morning, the Hon. Captain Henry Somerset and myself
exchanged nineteen shots in the glen, and at each fire I shot away
a button from his uniform. As my last bullet shot off the last
button from his sleeve, I remarked quietly, "You seem now, my lord,
to be almost as ragged as the gentry you sneered at," and rode
haughtily away.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIGHTING FIFTY-SIXTH.
When I was nineteen years old my father sold the Chateau d'Enville
and purchased my commission in the "Fifty-sixth" with the proceeds.
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