This unexpected interview with the
mendicant's daughter, joined to the hints he had already received, once
more caused M'Mahon to feel considerably perplexed with regard to Hycy
Burke. The coincidence was very remarkable, and the identity of the
information, however limited, appeared to him to deserve all the
consideration which he could bestow upon it, but above all things he
resolved, if possible, to extract the secret out of Nanny Peety.
One cause of Hycy Burke's extravagance was a hospitable habit of dining
and giving dinners in the head inn of Ballymacan. To ask any of his
associates to his father's house was only to expose the ignorance of his
parents, and this his pride would not suffer him to do. As a matter
of course he gave all his dinners, unless upon rare occasions, in Jack
Shepherd's excellent inn; but as young Clinton and he were on terms of
the most confidential intimacy, he had asked him to dine on the day in
question at his father's.
"You know, my dear Harry," he said to his friend, "there is no use in
striving to conceal the honest vulgarity of Jemmy the gentleman from you
who know it already. I may say ditto to madam, who is unquestionably the
most vulgar of the two--for, and I am sorry to say it, in addition to a
superabundant stock of vulgarity, she has still a larger assortment of
the prides; for instance, pride of wealth, of the purse, pride of--I
was going to add, birth--ha! ha! ha!--of person, ay, of beauty, if
you please--of her large possessions--but that comes under the purse
again--and lastly--but that is the only well-founded principle among
them--of her accomplished son, Hycy.
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