第34章 CHAPTER VII(1)

THE CONSQUINSIES.

The shevalliay did not die, for the ball came out of its own accord, in the midst of a violent fever and inflamayshn which was brot on by the wound. He was kept in bed for 6 weeks though, and did not recover for a long time after.

As for master, his lot, I'm sorry to say, was wuss than that of his advisary. Inflammation came on too; and, to make an ugly story short, they were obliged to take off his hand at the rist.

He bore it, in cors, like a Trojin, and in a month he too was well, and his wound heel'd; but I never see a man look so like a devvle as he used sometimes, when he looked down at the stump!

To be sure, in Miss Griffinses eyes, this only indeerd him the mor.

She sent twenty noats a day to ask for him, calling him her beloved, her unfortunat, her hero, her wictim, and I dono what.

I've kep some of the noats, as I tell you, and curiously sentimentle they are, beating the sorrows of MacWhirter all to nothing.

Old Crabs used to come offen, and consumed a power of wine and seagars at our house. I bleave he was at Paris because there was an exycution in his own house in England; and his son was a sure find (as they say) during his illness, and couldn't deny himself to the old genlmn. His eveninx my lord spent reglar at Lady Griffin's; where, as master was ill, I didn't go any more now, and where the shevalier wasn't there to disturb him.

"You see how that woman hates you, Deuceace," says my lord, one day, in a fit of cander, after they had been talking about Lady Griffin: "SHE HAS NOT DONE WITH YOU YET, I tell you fairly."

"Curse her," says master, in a fury, lifting up his maim'd arm--"curse her! but I will be even with her one day. I am sure of Matilda: I took care to put that beyond the reach of a failure.

The girl must marry me, for her own sake."

"FOR HER OWN SAKE! O ho! Good, good!" My lord lifted his i's, and said gravely, "I understand, my dear boy: it is an excellent plan."

"Well," says master, grinning fearcely and knowingly at his exlent old father, "as the girl is safe, what harm can I fear from the fiend of a step-mother?"

My lord only gev a long whizzle, and, soon after, taking up his hat, walked off. I saw him sawnter down the Plas Vandome, and go in quite calmly to the old door of Lady Griffinses hotel. Bless his old face! such a puffickly good-natured, kind-hearted, merry, selfish old scoundrel, I never shall see again.

His lordship was quite right in saying to master that "Lady Griffin hadn't done with him." No moar she had. But she never would have thought of the nex game she was going to play, IF SOMEBODY HADN'T PUT HER UP TO IT. Who did? If you red the above passidge, and saw how a venrabble old genlmn took his hat, and sauntered down the Plas Vandome (looking hard and kind at all the nussary-maids--buns they call them in France--in the way), I leave you to guess who was the author of the nex scheam: a woman, suttnly, never would have pitcht on it.

In the fuss payper which I wrote concerning Mr. Deuceace's adventers, and his kind behayvior to Messrs. Dawkins and Blewitt, I had the honor of laying before the public a skidewl of my master's detts, in witch was the following itim:

"Bills of xchange and I.O.U.'s, 4963L. 0s. 0d."

The I.O.U.se were trifling, say a thowsnd pound. The bills amountid to four thowsnd moar.

Now, the lor is in France, that if a genlmn gives these in England, and a French genlmn gits them in any way, he can pursew the Englishman who has drawn them, even though he should be in France.

Master did not know this fact--laboring under a very common mistak, that, when onst out of England, he might wissle at all the debts he left behind him.