“It _will_ be--it shall be--as happily as honourably. Listen to me, Moriarty--as honourably now as ever. Can you think me so wicked, so base, as to say, _wife_, if--no, passion might hurry me to a rash, but of a base action I’m incapable. Upon my soul, upon the sacred honour of a gentleman--” Moriarty sighed. “Look!” continued Ormond, taking the rose from his breast; “this is the utmost that ever passed between us, and that was my fault: I snatched it, and thus--thus,” cried he, tearing the rose to pieces, “I scatter it to the winds of heaven; and thus may all trace of past fancy and folly be blown from remembrance!” “Amen!” said Moriarty, watching the rose-leaves for an instant, as they flew and were scattered out of sight; then, as Ormond broke the stalk to pieces, and flung it from him, he asked, with a smile, “Is the pain about your heart gone now, Moriarty?” “No, plase your honour, not gone; but a quite different--better--but worse. So strange with me--I can’t speak rightly--for the pleasure has seized me stronger than the pain.” “Lean against me, poor fellow. Oh, if I had broken such a heart!” “Then how wrong I was when I said that word I did!” said Moriarty. “I ask your honour, your dear honour’s pardon on my knees.” “For what?--For what?--You have done no wrong.” “No:--but I said wrong--very wrong--when I said stab me to the heart _again_. Oh, that word _again_--it was very ungenerous.” “Noble fellow!” said Ormond. “Good night to your honour, kindly,” said Moriarty. “How happy I am now!” said our young hero to himself, as he walked home, “which I never should have been if I had done this wrong.” A fortunate escape!--yes: but when the escape is owing to good fortune, not to prudence--to good feeling, not to principle--there is no security for the future. Ormond was steady to his promise toward Moriarty: to do him justice, he was more than this--he was generous, actively, perseveringly generous, in his conduct to him. With open heart, open purse, public overture, and private negotiation with the parents of Peggy Sheridan, he at last succeeded in accomplishing Moriarty’s marriage. Ormond’s biographer may well be allowed to make the most of his persevering generosity on this occasion, because no other scrap of good can be found, of which to make any thing in his favour, for several months to come. Whether Tom Jones was still too much, and Lady Annaly too little, in his head--whether it was that King Corny’s example and precepts were not always edifying--whether this young man had been prepared by previous errors of example and education--or whether he fell into mischief because he had nothing else to do in these Black Islands; certain it is, that from the operation of some or all of these causes conjointly, he deteriorated sadly. He took to “vagrant courses,” in which the muse forbears to follow him. CHAPTER VIII.