To a friend who remonstrated
with him, he answered that he reckoned on being lost at sea, and on so
committing a suicide worthy of the desperate life that he had led. The
last accounts of him, after this, were too vague and too contradictory
to be depended on. At one time it was reported that he had returned to
the United States. Not long afterwards unaccountable paragraphs
appeared in newspapers declaring, at one and the same time, that he was
living among bad company in Paris, and that he was hiding disreputably
in an ill famed quarter of the city of Dublin, called "the Liberties."
In any case there was good reason to fear that Irish-American
desperadoes had entangled the wild lord in the network of political
conspiracy.
The maid noticed a change in the mistress which surprised her, when she
had reached the end of the newspaper story. Of Miss Henley's customary
good spirits not a trace remained. "Few people, Rhoda, remember what
they read as well as you do." She said it kindly and sadly--and she
said no more.
There was a reason for this.
Now at one time, and now at another, Iris had heard of Lord Harry's
faults and failings in fragments of family history. The complete record
of his degraded life, presented in an uninterrupted succession of
events, had now forced itself on her attention for the first time.
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