“Come here, Bella,” said he, in a low tone,--“come here to me. There's a pound in my waistcoat-pocket, in my room; put a shilling inside of it, for it's a guinea he ought to have, and gold, by rights, if we had it. And tell him we 'll send for him if we want to see him again. Do it delicately, darling, so as not to let him know. Say I 'm used to these attacks; say they're in the family; say--But there, they are driving away,--they're off! and he never waited for his fee! That's the strangest thing of all.” And so he fell a-thinking over this curious fact, muttering from time to time to himself, “I never heard of the like before.” CHAPTER XXIV. THE COTTAGE Davenport Dunn had but little leisure to think about Conway or poor Kellett. A change of Ministry had just occurred in England, and men's minds were all eagerly speculating who was “to come in.” Crowds of country gentlemen flocked up to Dublin, and “rising men” of all shades of opinion anxiously paraded their own claims to notice. Dunn's house was besieged from morning to night by visitors, all firmly persuaded that he must know more of the coming event than any one. Whether such was really the case, or that he deemed it good policy to maintain the delusion, Dunn affected a slight indisposition, and refused to admit any visitor. Mr. Clowes, indeed, informed the inquirers that it was a mere passing ailment,--“a slight derangement in the bronchi,” he said; but be rigidly maintained the blockade, and suffered none to infringe it. Of course, a hundred rumors gave their own version of this illness. It was spleen; it was indignation; the Government had thrown him over: he had been refused the secretaryship which he had formerly applied for. Others averred that his attack was most serious,--an ossification or a scirrhus of some cartilage, a thing always fatal and dreadfully painful. Some went further. It was his prosperity was in peril. Over-speculation had jeopardized him, and he was deep in the “Crédit Mobilier.” Now, all this while, the disappointed politician, the hopeless invalid, and the ruined speculator ate and drank well, received and wrote replies to innumerable confidential notes from those in power, and carefully drew up a list of such as he desired to recommend to the Government for place and employment. Every morning Sir Maurice Dashwood's well-appointed cab drew up at his door, and the lively baronet would dash up the stairs to Dunn's room with all the elasticity of youth, and more real energy than is the fortune of one young fellow in a thousand. With a consummate knowledge of men and the world, he was second to none in his profession. He felt he could afford to indulge the gay and buoyant spirits with which Nature had blessed him, and even, doctor that he was, take his share in all the sports of the field and all the pleasures of society.