The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain: The Works of William Carleton, Volume OneCarleton, William
General
The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain: The Works of William Carleton, Volume One
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
His two male companions filled their glasses, and joined him heartily.
O'Donegan shook him by the hand, so did Corbet, and they now could
understand the cause of his very natural elevation of spirits.
“So you have all got legacies,” proceeded Mr. Ambrose; “fifty pounds
apiece, I hear, by the death of your brother, Mr. Corbet, who was
steward to Lady Gourlay--I am delighted to hear it--hip, hip, hurra,
again.”
“It's true enough,” observed the prophetess, “a good, kind-hearted man
was my poor brother Edward.”
“How is that old scoundrel of a Black Baronet in your neighborhood--Sir
Thomas--he who murdered his brother's heir?”
“For God's sake, Mr. Ambrose, don't say so. Don't you know that he got
heavy damages against Captain Furlong for using the same words?”
“He be hanged,” said the tipsy student; “he murdered him as sure as I
sit at this table; and God bless the worthy, be the same man or woman,
who left himself, as he left his brother's widow, without an heir to his
ill-gotten title and property.”
The fortune-teller rose up, and entreated him not to speak harshly
against Sir Thomas Gourlay, adding, “That, perhaps, he was not so bad
as the people supposed; but,” she added, “as they--that is, she and
her brother--happened to be in town, they were anxious to see him (the
student); and, indeed, they would feel obliged if he came with them into
the front room for ten minutes or so, as they wished to have a little
private conversation with him.”
The change in his features at this intimation was indeed surprising.
A keen, sharp sense of self-possession, an instant recollection of his
position and circumstances, banished from them, almost in an instant,
the somewhat careless and tipsy expression which they possessed on his
entrance.
“Certainly,” said he--“Mr. O'Donegan, will you take care of yourself
until we return?”
“No doubt of it,” replied the pedagogue, as they left the room, “I shall
not forget myself, no more than that the image and superscription of Sir
Thomas Gourlay, the Black Baronet, is upon your diabolical visage.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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