Jerome abruptly came to a dead stop. His eyes leaped to the other’s face. The priest looked at him with a slight cool smile, half rallying, half surprised.
‘Never,’ at last replied Wellfield, almost frigidly. But his heart was beating fast and suddenly.
‘I am surprised at that. I should fancy it would be very easily arranged. And then, if you really wish for employment, nothing would be easier than to find it. It is always to be bought, if you will pay dear enough for it. Were you but a Catholic, I know of one—two marriages of that kind, which might soon be negotiated through our influence. As it is, I am not Jesuit enough to pretend that I would connive at marrying a Catholic heiress to a heretic, even where the heretic is Jerome Wellfield.’
Jerome laughed a little. ‘It would certainly be a good deal to expect,’ said he.
‘It would, since you would probably not only marry the heiress, but convert her, if you wished to. But why should you not think of Miss Bolton? You would soon win her, and, with her, regain your patrimony and your home.’
He did not expatiate upon the subject. Jerome, engrossed by his real love, had absolutely not once thought of Miss Bolton in the light in which she was now held up to him. She was very rich. Some time she would be the mistress of Wellfield Abbey. He rather liked her, in a superior, patronising kind of way, but otherwise she was utterly indifferent to him; whereas every fibre of his heart was powerfully drawn in another direction.
‘Impossible, Father! The circumstances make it out of the question,’ said he, coldly and decisively.
‘The course is clear,’ said the priest, calmly. ‘Miss Bolton is not engaged. She is anything but disagreeable or stupid. Considering her training, she is a marvel of refinement; and if you married her you could make her into what you pleased. You have no rivals, and if you had, none here who could for a moment compete with yourself.’
‘Pardon me; I know nothing of Miss Bolton’s feelings, of course, but unless I am much mistaken I have—should have, I mean—a rival in her cousin, John Leyburn, as good a fellow as ever breathed.’
Father Somerville laughed—laughed as a man laughs who has heard a jest full of a quaint conceit which delights him. He had a musical laugh, and there was nothing offensive in his manner.