As for William Henry, although Frank and he were by no means ill friends, it was not likely that he should have been pleased to see this visitor, whose presence must needs interrupt the tête-à-tête with which he now indulged himself every evening with Margaret; and, though he was no longer jealous of his former rival, it was certain that he would much have preferred his room to his company.
The welcome that was given by all three to the new comer was, however, cordial enough. ‘You are come, Dennis,’ cried Mr. Erin, taking the bull by the horns, ‘in the very nick of time. William Henry has to-day found a treasure, beside which his previous discoveries sink into insignificance, “A Profession of Faith,” by Shakespeare, written from end to end in his own hand.’
‘That must indeed be interesting,’ said Frank. His tone, however, was without excitement, and mechanical. His countenance, which had been full of friendship (though when turned to Margaret it had had, she thought, an expression of gentle melancholy), fell as he uttered the words; a gravity, little short of disapproval, seemed to take possession of it.
‘Hang the fellow!’ murmured Mr. Erin to himself, ‘he’s beginning to pick holes already.’ ‘It is the most marvellous and conclusive evidence,’ he went on aloud, ‘of Shakespeare’s adherence to the Protestant faith that heart can desire; but there’s a word here that we are in doubt about. Just read the MS. and see if anything strikes you as anomalous.’
Frank sat down to his task. The expression of the faces of the other three would have required the art of Hogarth himself to depict them. That of Margaret’s was full of sorrow, pain for herself, and distress for Frank, and annoyance upon her uncle’s account. How she regretted having made that stupid objection, though she had done it with a good motive, since she foresaw that it would presently be made by much less friendly critics! Why could she not have been content to let matters take their own course, as Willie always was?
On his brow, on the other hand, there sat a complete serenity. From the very first his attitude with respect to his own discoveries had been one of philosophic indifference. Nothing ever roused him from it, not even when the scepticism of others took the most offensive form. He had not, he said, ‘the learning requisite for the defence of “the faith” that was in him,’ and moreover it did not concern him to defend it. He was merely an instrument; the matter in question was in the hands of others.
This was of course by no means the view which Mr. Erin took. He had not only the confidence but the zeal of the convert. If he would not himself have gone to the stake in defence of the genuineness of his new-found treasure, he would very cheerfully have sent thither all who disputed it. He was regarding his friend Dennis now, as he plodded through the Profession, with anything but amicable looks, but when he marked his eye pass over that weak point in its armour with which we are acquainted, without stoppage, his brow cleared a little, and he gave a sigh of relief.
‘Well,’ he inquired gently, ‘what say you? Have you found the error, or does it seem to you all straight sailing?’