Herbert exacted a promise from him that he would continue to tell him everything which he might learn, and then rode back to Castle Richmond.
"The whole thing must be a delusion," he said to himself; and resolved that there was no valid reason why he should make Clara unhappy by any reference to the circumstance.
CHAPTER XIII.
MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET.
I must now take my readers back to that very unsavoury public-house in South Main Street, Cork, in which, for the present, lived Mr. Matthew Mollett and his son Abraham.
I need hardly explain to a discerning public that Mr. Matthew Mollett was the gentleman who made that momentous call at Castle Richmond, and flurried all that household.
"Drat it!" said Mrs. Jones to herself on that day, as soon as she had regained the solitude of her own private apartment, after having taken a long look at Mr. Mollett in the hall. On that occasion she sat down on a low chair in the middle of the room, put her two hands down substantially on her two knees, gave a long sigh, and then made the above exclamation,—"Drat it!"
Mrs. Jones was still thoroughly a Saxon, although she had lived for so many years among the Celts. But it was only when she was quite alone that she allowed herself the indulgence of so peculiarly Saxon a mode of expressing either her surprise or indignation.
"It's the same man," she said to herself, "as come that day, as sure as eggs;" and then for five minutes she maintained her position, cogitating. "And he's like the other fellow too," she continued. "Only, somehow he's not like him." And then another pause. "And yet he is; only it can't be; and he ain't just so tall, and he's older like." And then, still meditating, Mrs. Jones kept her position for full ten minutes longer; at the end of which time she got up and shook herself. She deserved to be bracketed with Lord Brougham and Professor Faraday, for she had kept her mind intent on her subject, and had come to a resolution. "I won't say nothing to nobody, noways," was the expression of her mind's purpose. "Only I'll tell missus as how he was the man as come to Wales." And she did tell so much to her mistress—as we have before learned.