As the lawyer walked thoughtfully on towards the Red House, he acknowledged to himself that this conviction of the Squire’s was probably well grounded. Even to the eyes of a suspicious man, and Mr Pitt was partly from nature and partly from profession suspicious, the Vicar had carried that about him which made it very difficult to doubt his honour. It was quite possible that the contents of the letter had been withheld from him. But the other affair had resolved itself almost into certainty. When Mr Tregennas read to him the words he had just written, Mr Pitt had felt that it was putting human virtue to too severe a test; he half smiled at himself now for having been such a fool as to cherish a hope that the young man would be generous to Margaret Hare’s child at his own expense.
Chapter Sixteen.
“A very pitiful lady, very young,
Exceeding rich in human sympathies.”
Rosetti’s Dante.
The Squire was more utterly cast down by Mr Pitt’s communication than those would have thought possible who knew that Anthony Miles had never been a favourite of his. Perhaps a little touch of jealousy had given the first warp when he looked at the Vicar’s son and his own daughters, and had made him always hard upon the young fellow; but it was not a jealousy which could take pleasure in such a discovery as this. He was so cross and miserable throughout the day that Winifred felt sure something was the matter. Mr Pitt had left them; the evening was cold and stormy, a southwest gale was blowing, and the wind tore at the windows and howled drearily round the house. Winifred only waited until Bessie had gone to bed—a concession to years of half an hour against which that young lady nightly rebelled—before she asked her father what had happened, and whether Mr Pitt had brought any bad news.
“Yes, he has,” said the Squire doggedly; “very bad news. It’s well the poor old Vicar should be dead and gone.”
And then he told her.
As he went bluntly through Mr Pitt’s account he once or twice looked curiously at her, for, in spite of his disclaimer, he could not help remembering that other hint which the lawyer had let drop, that Winifred was dear to Anthony. “If it is so, she’ll have hysterics or something; that’s how girls always show it.”