Calantha had not heard of Sir Everard’s misfortunes; and was really afraid to ask him what had occurred. He held her hand, and wept so audibly, that she already saw some of those present turning away, for fear they should not be able to conceal their laughter: his strange gestures were indeed a hard trial. “Be pacified, calm yourself my good Doctor,” said Mrs. Seymour, giving him a chair: “Heaven forfend,” said Sir Everard: “Nature, Madam, will have a vent. I am the most miserable man alive: I am undone, you well know; but Lord! this dear child knows little if any thing about it. Oh! I am a mere nothing now in the universe.” Gondimar, with a smile, assured Sir Everard that could never be the case, whilst he retained, unimpaired, that full rotundity of form. “Sir, are you here?” cried the Doctor, fiercely: “but it is of small importance. I am no longer the soft phlegmatic being you left me. I am a wild beast, Sir—a dangerous animal.—Away with your scoffs.—I will fight, Sir—murder, Sir—aye, and smile whilst I murder.” There was something in these words which turned Lady Margaret’s cheeks to a deadly pale; but the Doctor, who had sought for forcible expressions alone, without the least heeding the application, continued to storm and to rage. “I’m a man,” he cried, “accustomed to sufferings and to insult. Would you credit it, dear Lady Calantha: can you comprehend it?—that lawless gang—those licentious democrats—those rebellious libertines, have imposed on the inordinate folly of my wife and daughters, who, struck mad, like Agave in the orgies of Bacchus, are running wild about the country, their hair dishevelled, their heads ornamented with green cockades, and Lady St. Clare, to the shame of her sex and me, the property of a recruiting serjeant, employed by one of that nest of serpents at the abbey, to delude others, and all, I believe, occasioned by that arch fiend, Glenarvon.” “Oh!” cried Gerald MacAllain, who was in attendance at the breakfast table, “saving your honour’s pardon, the young Lord of Glenarvon has been the cause of my two brave boys being saved from the gallows. I will rather lose my life, than stand to hear him called an arch fiend.” “He is one, old Gerald, whether you or I call him so or no. Witness how, the other night, he set the rabble with their torches to burning Mr. O’Flarney’s barns, and stealing his sheep and oxen and all his goods.” “Och it’s my belief the rector of Belfont, when he comes, will speak a word for him thoft,” returned Gerald MacAllain; “for, save the presence of the Duke, who is not here to hear me, he has been our guard and defence all the while his grace’s honour has been out of the kingdom.” “Curses light upon him and his gang,” cried Sir Everard, furiously. “Are not Miss Laura and Miss Jessica after him at this very time, and my pretty niece, my young, my dear Elinor, and Lady St. Clare, more crazy than all, is not she following him about as if he were some god?”