"But if any one could be sent over to the village of Barholm, my lord," said Sir Roger, "since your lordship is so very good, they would find my valise at the inn."
"Certainly, certainly," said the peer, increasing in courtesy at every response--"certainly; we will see about it directly." And he rang the bell once or twice with that air of good-will which was well calculated to wipe away the memory of any former coldness. "Richard," he said, as soon as a servant appeared, "send over the errand-boy on horseback directly to Barholm, and bid him inquire for the things Sir Roger Millington has left there at the inn. Bid the groom look to Sir Roger's horse, and then come here to show him to the yellow room. Attend upon him while he does me the pleasure of remaining here, and see that everything is supplied properly.--Now, Sir Roger, I must beg you to excuse me for a short time, but I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at dinner."
Sir Roger bowed low: the peer withdrew; and the servant, saying, "I will be back in a minute, sir, to show you to your apartments," followed, to give the orders he had received to the errand-boy and the under-groom.
Sir Roger Millington cast himself back into his chair, mentally declaring, "'Pon my soul, he seems a devilish good fellow, after all; somewhat hasty, and hellish proud, but better at bottom than he lets himself appear. I should not wonder if this card, which, by----, is the last in my hand, should turn up a trump, after all. Egad, that would be queer!"
Such were his first reflections; and he had not time to proceed much beyond them when the servant reappeared, and begged him to follow. The visiter immediately complied; and walking through a suite of handsome rooms, where gold lace, and damask, and pictures, and cabinets, and brass, and tortoise-shell, and marble, combined to form a very dazzling assemblage of furniture and decorations, he was led up a fine flight of stairs to another story, where, through corridors scarcely less handsomely garnished than the apartments below, he was conducted, murmuring, "What a splendid house!" to a spacious bedroom and dressing-room, adorned with yellow damask hangings, and supplied with everything at which luxury had yet arrived in the days whereof we speak. Here, after asking his further commands, the servant left him, and Sir Roger Millington threw himself on one of the sofas, asking, "Well, what the devil can the fellow want? for want something he certainly does. However, no matter; all the better for me. I'm the man for his money, whatever he wants; and, by Jupiter! I'll take good care not to quarrel with the sort of bread and butter that is to be got in this house!"
Leaving Sir Roger Millington to speculate upon such very natural propositions, we may as well follow the peer once more to his private room, and endeavour to ascertain the cause of a change in his demeanour towards the poor knight, which had been, as we have seen, no less sudden than complete.
No sooner had he entered the chamber than he closed the door, and bolted it; approached a small iron chest, which stood riveted to the floor and to the wall, and, opening it with a key which was attached to a strong gold chain round his neck, he folded his arms upon his breast, and gazed in for a moment, biting his lip and straining his eye as if it required no small powers of self-command to proceed any farther. He then drew forth a large holster-pistol, richly embossed with silver--the fellow to that which had been placed in the hands of Edward de Vaux by the gipsy Pharold--and held it for a time in his hand, with his eyes not fixed upon it, but upon some far object in the distant landscape, which nevertheless, he saw not in the least; for the intensity of the mind's occupation at that moment had broken for the time the connection between the intellectual soul and her servants, the corporal senses; so that his eye was as blind to the things on which it was fixed as if it had been seared by lightning. His thoughts were far away--in other years and in other scenes; and as he laid the weapon down upon a chair beside him, he murmured, "It must have fallen into the river, or it would have been found with the hat."
He then sought for a moment among some papers, from which he selected one; and replacing every thing in the chest as it had been before, turned to the table and gazed upon the sheet, which seemed alone filled with memoranda of dates and numbers that certainly could possess no meaning to any eye but his own. To him, however, their import seemed of great consequence; for again and again he studied them; and ever and anon the contemplation would plunge him into deep fits of thought, from which he only roused himself again to gaze upon the figures as before.
"It will do," he said at length, "it will do; but I must take care of what I am about. Yet of this Roger Millington there is no fear. He would at any time of his life have condemned his own soul for gold, and now he seems beggared and wretched enough. The other people can offer him nothing: I can offer him ease and luxury; and he will not only have no temptation to betray me, but every inducement to keep my secret till the grave closes over us both. And yet," he added, thoughtfully--"and yet I must not put it in his power ever to annoy me hereafter. He must rest in my power rather than I in his. Yet if we can silence this Pharold for ever, all real danger will be past; and I must risk something--I must risk much, for that object."
Such were some of the thoughts which passed through the mind of Lord Dewry; nor were his conclusions formed upon a very wrong estimate of the character of his present visiter. The better qualities of Sir Roger Millington were few. The best of them was personal courage, or rather that total thoughtlessness in regard to death, and what is to follow death, which in many men supplies the place of a nobler principle. He had always, too, been what is called generous; and he did, indeed, possess that curious combination of qualities which makes a man pillage and ruin the father of a family, and thus bring want, destruction, and desolation upon a whole household, while at the same time he is willing, on every occasion, to share the ill-gotten wealth of the moment with any one who needs it. His generosity, however, still more displayed itself in wasting, among debauchees like himself, whatever he possessed, and thinking no means ignoble to dissipate what he had thought no means dishonourable to obtain.