The step of Sir Philip Hastings roused them, and turning round, the attorney bowed law, saying, "I give you good day, Sir Philip. I hope I have the honor of seeing you well."
"Quite so," was the brief reply, and it was followed by an inquiry for the pastor, who it seemed had gone into another room for some papers which were required.
In the mean time the younger of the two previous occupants of the room had been gazing at Sir Philip Hastings with a rude, familiar stare, which the object of it did not remark; and in another moment the clergyman himself appeared, carrying a bundle of old letters in his hand.
He was a heavy, somewhat timid man, the reverse of his predecessor in all things, but a very good sort of person upon the whole. On seeing the baronet there, however, something seemed strangely to affect him--a sort of confused surprise, which, after various stammering efforts, burst forth as soon as the usual salutation was over, in the words, "Pray, Sir Philip, did you come by appointment?"
Sir Philip Hastings, as the reader already knows, was a somewhat unobservant man of what was passing around him in the world. He had his own deep, stern trains of thought, which he pursued with a passionate earnestness almost amounting to monomania. The actions, words, and even looks of those few in whom he took an interest, he could sometimes watch and comment on in his own mind with intense study. True, he watched without understanding, and commented wrongly; for he had too little experience of the motives of others from outward observation, and found too little sympathy with the general motives of the world, in his own heart, to judge even those he loved rightly. But the conduct, the looks, the words of ordinary men, he hardly took the trouble of remarking; and the good parson's surprise and hesitation, passed like breath upon a mirror, seen perhaps, but retaining no hold upon his mind for a moment. Neither did the abrupt question surprise him; nor the quick, angry look which it called up on the face of the attorney attract his notice; but he replied quietly to Mr. Dixwell, "I do not remember having made any appointment with you."
The matter was all well so far; and would have continued well; but the attorney, a meddling fellow, had nearly spoiled all, by calling the attention of Philip Hastings more strongly to the strangeness of the clergyman's question.
"Perhaps," said the man of law, interrupting the baronet in the midst, "Perhaps Mr. Dixwell thought, Sir Philip, that you came here to speak with me on the business of the Honorable Mrs. Hazleton. She told me she would consult you, and I can explain the whole matter to you."
But the clergyman instantly declared that he meant nothing of the kind; and at the same moment Sir Philip Hastings said, "I beg you will not, sir. Mrs. Hazleton will explain what she thinks proper to me, herself. I desire no previous information, as I am now on my way to her. Why my good friend here should suppose I came by appointment, I cannot tell. However, I did not; and it does not matter. I only wish, Mr. Dixwell, to say, that I hear the old woman Danley is ill and dying. She is a papist, and the foolish people about fancy she is a witch. Little help or comfort will she obtain from them, even if they do not injure or insult her. As I shall be absent all night, and perhaps all to-morrow, I will call at her cottage as I ride over to Mrs. Hazleton's and inquire into her wants. I will put down on paper, and leave there, what I wish my people to do for her; but there is one thing which I must request you to do, namely, to take every means, by exhortation and remonstrance, to prevent the ignorant peasantry from troubling this poor creature's death-bed. Her sad errors in matters of faith should only at such a moment make us feel the greater compassion for her."
Mr. Dixwell thought differently, for though a good man, he was a fanatic. He did not indeed venture to think of disobeying the injunction of the great man of the parish--the man who now held both the Hastings and the Marshal property; but he would fain have detained Sir Philip to explain and make clear to him the position--as clear as a demonstration in Euclid to his own mind--that all Roman Catholics ought to be, at the very least, banished from the country for ever.
But Sir Philip Hastings was not inclined to listen, and although the good man began the argument in a solemn tone, his visitor, falling into a fit of thought, walked slowly out of the room, along the passage, through the door, and mounted his horse, without effectually hearing one word, though they were many which Mr. Dixwell showered upon him as he followed.