While triumph was thus setting on the brow of Learmont—while Heaven was inflating his heart with the vanity of success, as if but to make his fall more awful, Ada, who we have followed through her various fortunes so long, was indeed happy in the best, the purest, acception of the term. Her joy was not the feverish excitement arising from successful machinations. It was heavenly serenity—the sunny happiness of a heart which knew no guile, and was only too much blessed in being permitted uncoerced and unpersecuted to follow out the dictates of its own ennobling feelings.
The whole household indeed of Sir Francis Hartleton, seemed to share in the satisfaction that there abounded, from what cause they knew not, but they were satisfied, from the smiles of Ada and the returning colour on her cheek, the evident happiness of Albert Seyton, and the pleasure which sparkled in the eyes of their master and mistress, that something must have happened to bring great joy among them.
It was the Saturday morning before Britton had the least interval of sobriety, and then so stultified were his faculties with the debauch of the last two days, far exceeding as it did any that he had previously indulged in, that he was some time in comprehending what Bond the butcher meant, when, after repeated howlings in his ear, he heard him say—
“Britton, curse you, you beast, the squire, your rich friend, is going to give a ball to-night, I hear, and all the people are to go, they tell me, with masks. Do you hear, you brute?”
“Yes, and be hanged to you; you are as drunk as you can be, and you know it,” responded Britton. “More brandy—more brandy! Damn Jacob Gray—no, curse it, it’s no use damning Jacob Gray any more now: he’s damned already—damn everybody.”
“Ah, Master Britton,” exclaimed a man who had just entered the Chequers with a determination of enjoying a pipe, and a quart of ale, and a grumble—“we live in hard times, Master Britton—are we to have our heads smashed—are we to have our throats cut—are we to be murdered in our beds—are we—”
“I tell you what,” said Bond, “if you come any more of your ‘are we’s,’ I’ll just throw you out of the window.”
“Throw me out of the window? pooh! I sit here on the liberty of the subject, and what I mean to say is, that everything is smothered now-a-days. Here’s been two murders, and they’ve both been smothered up. There was poor Mr. Vaughan’s murder—who ever heard anything of that, I should like to know? Then there’s been the murder of Mr. Gray, a most mysterious affair; and Sir Francis Hartleton, who prides himself so much upon his being such an active magistrate, he does nothing—nothing, my masters, I may add, nothing.”
“Smash him!” said Britton, and Bond, immediately rising, would have probably done some serious mischief, had not the man, who, by good luck was near the doors taken alarm in time, and rushed out crying, ‘Murder’ until he was met and pacified by the landlord, who persuaded him to sit down in the bar while he sneaked into the parlour to fetch his pipe and ale.
Just as the landlord entered the room, Britton shouted to him in a half-drowsy tone,—