Edward Clare looked up, with an eager face.
‘Wants to see me after church this evening—particular business,’ said the Vicar. ‘Tell Mr. Treverton’s man, yes, Susan. My compliments, and I’ll be at the Manor House before nine.’
Edward was mystified. Was John Treverton going to throw himself upon the Vicar’s mercy—to win that good, easy man, over to his cause—and persuade him to wink at the fraud upon the trusts under Jasper’s will? Edward had no opinion of his father’s wisdom, or his father’s strength of mind. The Vicar was so weakly fond of Laura.
‘I hate going out of an evening in such weather,’ said Mr. Clare, ‘but I suppose Treverton has something important to say, or he would hardly ask me to risk a bronchial attack.’
Tom Sampson, sitting by his comfortable fireside, solacing himself for the Sabbath dulness with a cup of strong tea and a dish of buttered toast, was also surprised by a letter from the Manor House, asking him to go there between eight and nine that evening.
‘I am sorry to trouble you about business on Sunday, but this is a matter which will not keep,’ wrote John Treverton.
‘I never did!’ exclaimed Eliza Sampson, when her brother had read the brief letter aloud.
Eliza was always protesting that she never did. This fragmentary phrase was her favourite expression of astonishment.
And then Miss Sampson began to speculate upon the probable nature of the business which required her brother’s presence at the Manor House. People who live in such a secluded village as Hazlehurst are very glad of anything to wonder about on a Sunday evening in winter.
At half-past eight precisely, Mr. Sampson presented himself at the Manor House, and was shown into the library. This room was rarely used, as Mr. and Mrs. Treverton kept all their favourite books elsewhere. Here, on these massive oaken shelves, there was no literature that was not at least a century old. It was a repository for the genius of the dead. Travels, from Marco Polo to Captain Cook; histories, from Herodotus to Mrs. Catherine Macaulay; poetry, from Chaucer to Milton; all bound in soberest brown calf, all with the dust of years thick upon their upper edges. It was a long, narrow room, with three tall windows, curtained with faded crimson cloth. It had an awful and almost judicial look on this Sunday evening, dimly lighted by a pair of moderator lamps on the centre table, making a focus of light in the middle of the room, and leaving the corners in darkness. There was a good fire in the wide old basket-shaped grate, and Tom Sampson sat beside it, waiting for his host to appear. Trimmer had told him that Mr. Treverton would be with him presently.