“You are making a heavier demand than you are aware of,--Darcy detests anything like concealment. I don't believe he would practise the slightest mystery that would involve insincerity for twelve hours to free the whole estate.” “Very honorable indeed; but at this moment we must waive a punctilio.” “Don't give it that name to him,--that's all,” said Daly, sternly. “I am as little for subterfuge as any man, and yet I did my best to prevent him resigning his seat in the House; this morning he would send a request to Lord Castlereagh, begging he might be permitted to accept an escheatorship; I need not say how willingly the proposal was accepted, and his name will appear in the 'Gazette' to-morrow morning.” “This conduct, if persisted in, will ruin our case,” said the lawyer, despondingly. “I cannot comprehend his reasons for it.” “They are simple enough: his own words were, 'I can never continue to be a member of the legislature when the only privilege it would confer is freedom from arrest.'” “A very valuable one at this crisis, if he knew but all,” muttered the other. “You will write to young Darcy at once.” “That he has done already, and to Lady Eleanor also; and as he expects me at seven, I 'll take my leave of you till to-morrow.” “Well, Daly,” said the Knight, as his friend entered the drawing-room before dinner, “how do you like the lawyer?” “He's a shrewd fellow, and I suppose, for his calling, an honest one; but the habit of making the wrong seem right leads to a very great inclination to reverse the theorem, and make the right seem wrong.” “He thinks badly of our case, is n't that so?” “He 'd think much better of it, and of us too, I believe, if both were worse.” “I am just as well pleased that it is not so,” said Darcy, smiling; “a bad case is far more endurable than a bad conscience. But here comes dinner, and I have got my appetite back again.” CHAPTER XXIV. A GLANCE AT “THE FULL MOON.” To rescue our friend Bagenal Daly from any imputation the circumstance might suggest, it is as well to observe here, that when he issued the order to his servant to seek out the boy who brought the intelligence of Gleeson's flight, he was merely relying on that knowledge of the obscure recesses of Old Dublin which Sandy possessed, and not by any means upon a distinct acquaintance with gentlemen of the same rank and station as Jemmy. When Daly first took up his residence in the capital, many, many years before, he was an object of mob worship. He had every quality necessary for such. He was immensely rich, profusely spendthrift, and eccentric to an extent that some characterized as insanity. His dress, his equipage, his liveries, his whole retinue and style of living were strange and unlike other men's, while his habits of life bid utter defiance to every ordinance of society.