Lady Evelyn — page 235: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

228 In the Tents of the Gypsies. ical experience, I never attended the death-bed of a mur- derer before, and I pray God never may again. I have -a nervous horror of being alone with this dying wretch.” “I will stay,” Colonel Uiummond said, very, very pale; “he need not see me. I should have remained in any case.’ | ' He crossed over to the little curtained window at the head of the bed and seated himself. Leaning his chin on his hand, he watched the rosy glory of the bright new day, and listened to the words that vindicated his honor, and left his name, tarnished for twenty long years, stain- less once more. The rector drew up a little table close to the bedside, pen, ink, and paper before him, and prepared to take down the deposition of the dying man. The words came slowly and with difficulty, but clear and unhesitating, freezing the poor rector with horror as he wrote. “It was one-and-twenty years ago,’ Morgan said—“ah, Heaven! it seems twenty centuries—since I practiced as attorney in Clontarf, County Wicklow, Ireland. I was a young man then—thirty, or thereabouts; my name is William Morgan, and I am English by birth.. I practiced my profession in Clontarf—I was land-agent for Sir Robert Young, doing well and amassing money, and hated, as most land-agents are, in Ireland. There was a young girl in the place, Kathleen O’Neal by name, a poor cotter’s daughter, with whom I fell in love. She laughed at me—she refused to listen to me—she would not be my wife. She loved, in her turn, one who did not care for her—Lord Roderick Desmond, only son of the Earl of Clontarf, the betrothed husband of the Spanish lady, Inez d’Alvarez.”’ The rector dropped his pen aghast. “Good God!” he cried. “Do you know of whom you speak? The lady-is alive yet—she is the Countess of _Clontarf.”’ The wounded man grinned horribly, a ghastly. smile. “She goes by that title,’ he said, “though I strongly doubt whether she has any legal right to it. That has nothing to do with my story, however. Kathleen would not listen to me, the odious English attorney, because she a worshipped the brilliant young Lord of Clortarf, with. his 3