While these highly satisfactory words were being addressed to poor Fitz.  Mrs. Fitzgerald had removed from her carriage to that of her husband, perhaps preferring four horses to two; or perhaps she had still some unexplained views of the transaction, which might as well be told on the road homeward.

Whatever might have been the nature of Mrs. F.’s dissertation, nothing is known.  The chaise containing these turtle doves arrived late at night at Kilkenny, and Fitz. was installed safely in his quarters before any one knew of his having come back.  The following morning he was reported ill; and for three weeks he was but once seen, and at that time only at his window, with a flannel night-cap on his head, looking particularly pale, and rather dark under one eye.

As for Curzon—­the last thing known of him that luckless morning, was his hiring a post-chaise for the Royal Oak, from whence he posted to Dublin, and hastened on to England.  In a few days we learned that the adjutant had exchanged into a regiment in Canada; and to this hour there are not three men in the __th who know the real secret of that morning’s misadventures.

THE CONFESSIONS OF HARRY LORREQUER, Vol. 3

[By Charles James Lever (1806-1872)]

Dublin

MDCCCXXXIX.

Volume 3. (Chapter XVIII-XXIII)

Contents: 

Chapter XVIII
Detachment Duty—­An Assize Town

Chapter XIX
The Assize Town

Chapter XX
A Day in Dublin

Chapter XXI
A Night at Howth

Chapter XXII
The Journey

Chapter XXIII
Calais

CHAPTER XVIII.

DETACHMENT DUTY—­AN ASSIZE TOWN.

As there appeared to be but little prospect of poor Fitzgerald ever requiring any explanation from me as to the events of that morning, for he feared to venture from his room, lest he might be recognised and prosecuted for abduction, I thought it better to keep my own secret also; and it was therefore with a feeling of any thing but regret, that I received an order which, under other circumstances, would have rendered me miserable—­to march on detachment duty.  To any one at all conversant with the life we lead in the army, I need not say how unpleasant such a change usually is.  To surrender your capital mess, with all its well-appointed equipments—­your jovial brother officers—­hourly flirtations with the whole female population—­never a deficient one in a garrison town—­not to speak of your matches at trotting, coursing, and pigeon-shooting, and a hundred other delectable modes of getting over the ground through life, till it please your ungrateful country and the Horse Guards to make you a major-general—­to