134 My Lodgings: a Sketch from Life. [ Aue. 
On hearing these distressing circumstances, which, under a promise of 
strictest secrecy, the mother had wrung from her almost senseless child, 
I instantly recommended an application to Captain H—. It was, how- 
ever, too late; he had set out a week before for Roscommon, so that all 
we could now do was to try and heal the stricken heart of his victim. 
Vain endeavour—she obstinately rejected consolation, and, with a sort 
of pettish tenacity, persisted in clinging to her grief as to the only friend 
she had left. Me she refused to see, for the recollection of her ex- 
posure had struck home to her heart, and she could never divest herself 
of a certain consciousness of disgrace attached to it. Sometimes I 
would knock gently at her room door, in the hopes of being perhaps ad- 
mitted ; but it was invariably opened by the mother, and a low faint 
voice, so faint that it scarcely even rose to a whisper, would at such 
times be heard, exclaiming, “ Pray, mother, do not let Mr. D— enter: 
do not, I intreat, I implore you, mother.” To such an appeal no answer 
could of course be made ; so the wayward girl was left to her own 
childish fancies; nor did I see her from that very,day until the me- 
morable moment of her death. And that moment was fast approaching. 
For some weeks she had appeared a little to recover, but a cold caught 
by exposure to the night air brought on all the old symptoms, and in 
a few days gathered her to the unfortunate of past ages. To this 
hour I cannot recal her image, as I saw her for the last time seated up- 
right in an old arm-chair, looking so pale, so melancholy, yet so beautiful 
and interesting, without a pang of acutest agony. I seem to feel that 
there is a gulph placed between me and the past, which memory per- 
petually, but in vain, is endeavouring to overleap. 
To return. The day before her death, our poor girl sent me down a 
note, written in pencil with her own hand, in which she thanked me for 
all past kindness, implored me to forgive her reserve, and entreated 
that, if I ever thought of her, it would be with tenderness. This note I 
still retain. It is blotted, particularly towards the end, with tears, as 
if the writer felt conscious that she was affixing to it a name which in 
a short time would be forgotten. After death I was permiited once, 
and but once, to see her. She'lay calm and happy, with her eyes and 
lips closed ; while a faint smile still lingered like a glow of sunset on her 
face, and proved that her dying moments had been cheered by 
some recollections which not even death itself could efface. As her 
mother was unable to defray even the most ordinary funeral ex- 
penses, the Lieutenant, the poet, and myself (together with our land- 
lady, who, to do her justice, behaved throughout with kindness), con- 
tributed our joint pittance, and bore poor Leonora to her long home, in 
Newington church-yard, where she now sleeps, about two yards off the 
main road—happy, if not in hope, at least in the absence of reflection. 
Thus, gentle reader, have I introduced you to the domestic politics 
of “ my lodgings.” The word “my,” by the way, is a misnomer—they 
are “mine” no longer, for I cannot support existence in a place from 
which, like the Jehabod of the Jews, the glory has for ever departed. 
Again, therefore, I set out a wanderer—happy, too happy, if I can meet 
with another Leonora; this, however, I cannot—dare not expect—it is 
enough to have met her once, and now that the reality is gone, to feed 
imagination on the remembrance. | 
