‘Think not I have forgot my promise to serve you in a certain matter, the will whereto, were I my own master, should bring it to a short conclusion. The truth is, if I could turn to it, my worries were the less, seeing I am so beset with divers claims and importunities that scarce can I call a moment of my time my own. Yet, be patient: patience proves oft the speedful suitor.’ Patience! To one on the rack! Brion read the missive through; and read it through again; and turned it up and down for any hint of more; then put it from him with a half whimsical sigh, and called himself a fool. He had no belief from that moment in any power to help him. The shock of disappointment had steadied his reason and brought him to himself again. Perhaps that was as well. Had it not been a poor fibreless love, he thought, that could engage a friend to contrive for it? Her champion! and he had insulted her rather through that weak commission. Never again. Henceforth his own sole resources should serve him, whether to win or fail. He went thus resolved about his customary duties, expecting no further satisfaction from his friend, and receiving none. Alas! too instantly successful in negotiating his ‘pack of small accomplishments,’ it is to be feared that that brilliant soldier of fortune had already lost conceit with those minor obligations which involved even a small measure of self-sacrifice. He was too absorbed over his own affairs to bestow a thought on another’s. Only once again, after a long interval, did he write, and that once again, in almost the same words, though carrying even less conviction, make his assurance of unforgetfulness. And after that no further letter came from him: he was launched full-flood on that prosperous and tragic tide which was to convey him by darkening stages to Traitor’s Gate and the block. Brion heard of him once as gone, in Lord Deputy Gray’s company, to Ireland, where he made a fine name for himself, and was confirmed in his royal mistress’s favour, by helping to put down the Earl of Desmond’s rebellion. But long before the date of that event he had passed--save as a picturesque memory, not untenderly recalled for all his particular shortcoming--out of the young man’s mind, so that any renewal of their intimacy was the last thing in the world expected by the latter. And yet it was to come to happen, and on the Captain’s return from that very expedition which was to add so greatly to his fortune and renown.