"And now, dear Margaret--believing this, as I know you will believe it--listen to a few words of counsel from one more world-learned than yourself. Remember that you are surrounded by his enemies--by those who, either from malice or mistake, seek to destroy him, and if they can not succeed in that, to deprive him of you. Trust them not, Margaret. Receive every thing they tell you with doubt. Be firm, constant, and true to the last; for be sure it is the only road to--the only chance of happiness. Let them not persuade you to any thing that can ever put a bar against your union with him. Let them never induce you to give up faith in despair. Far be it from me to urge any child to disobey a parent; but there is a limit to obedience beyond which no parent has a right to exact it, and the less when any command is founded on passion, prejudice, or error. I see before you many a difficulty and many a trial; but still, be firm under them all, and if any service can be rendered to you, or any support afforded, fear not to apply to me.
"Hortensia Danvers."
Why, I will not stop to inquire, but Margaret wept when she read those lines.
It is now time that we should descend to the room below, in which Lord Woodhall still sat after his young relation Robert had left him. He had read over twice the news from Sedgemoor, and was reading it again, when first there was a tap at the door, and then a portly and jovial figure entered, in very neat and bright attire. The black silk stockings fitted the sturdy calves of the legs and the neat ankle to the utmost nicety. Nothing could be brighter than the shoe. The cassock glistened like a raven's wing; and the round, smooth, well-shaven face, beaming with good nature and a kindly heart, was almost as lustrous as the gown.
"Well, my dear lord, well," cried Doctor M'Feely, "I have won my bet, I think. Monmouth has been beaten before the seventh of July, and I have won the living that your lordship promised."
"You shall have it--you shall have it, parson," said the old lord, whose spirits Robert's news had somewhat cheered, "though you have had as narrow a squeak of it as ever ninth pig had, just escaped the tithe. You should have had it, indeed," he added, in a good-humored tone, "even if you hadn't won the bet. You have waited a long time, but you have got a good one now. The presentation was made out the day before yesterday, and you have nothing to do but go down and ring yourself in. The dedimus, too, is made out, and sent down to Giles somebody or other, who will receive your oaths; for, as I told you, you must act as justice too in those wild parts. We know better than to put many parsons in the commission in Lincolnshire."
"Ay, that's the worst part of the bargain," said good Doctor M'Feely. "I wish I could get over that. I never could bear to send a poor creature to prison, I'm sure."
"Pooh! pooh!" said the old peer; "go and take the oaths directly, the first thing you do, and my word for it you will be as hard as a flint-stone before a twelvemonth is over, committing any lad who steals a cabbage or nooses a hare as readily as you will give a text on a Sunday. If you look in that drawer, you will find all the papers."
Doctor M'Feely got them out, with great reverence for the papers, and great joy at his new situation. He was a man destitute by no means of imagination, and it is inconceivable what apple-trees he planted in the orchard, and how he plowed the glebe. When he had got the precious documents in his pocket, however, which made him, with the consent of the bishop--no very difficult thing in those days--rector of the united parish of Bridlington cum Saddletree, and justice of the peace in the county of Dorset, he did not forget another errand he had in hand, though it was rather a delicate one.
"I thought I saw Master Robert Woodhall pass by me in the street," he said, after having thanked Lord Woodhall again and again; "has he been here? I thought he was in Somerset."