Pembroke felt an infinite disgust at this—Ahlberg with his waxed mustache, and his napkin tucked in his waistcoat, and his salmis and his truffles, making love to Olivia Berkeley!
“He doesn’t want Madame Koller to know it, though, I’ll warrant,” continued Miles. “Anybody can see his game there.”
“If he asks Olivia to marry him there will be another ear-boxing episode in this neighborhood,” said Pembroke with a short laugh.
CHAPTER VIII.
Poor Bob Henry, shut up in the county jail, had indeed said aright when he wrote Pembroke that both blacks and whites were “agin him.” Pembroke could scarcely find one of the negro race to testify to Bob Henry’s previous good character—and as he sifted his own evidence and surmised the State’s, he saw that but for the witness Cave had ferreted out, things would indeed have looked black for Bob Henry. At that time the apprehension as to the way the negroes in their freedom would behave toward the whites was as yet sinister, and the Hibbses, whose relative the dead man was, worked up the feeling against his supposed murderer with considerable astuteness. They were among the largest subscribers to Mr. Cole’s salary, and as such they gave their views freely to Mr. Cole upon the impropriety of his going to see Bob Henry in jail, and exerting himself to stem the tide against him among the black people.
Mr. Cole’s fair little face flushed up at this criticism delivered from old Mr. Hibbs in a loud and dictatorial voice on the court house green before a crowd of persons.
“Mr. Hibbs—I—I—am a minister of the gospel, sir, and my duty is to condole with the afflicted, sir,—and—however sir,—whatever may be your opinion of that poor wretch in the jail yonder, and however it may conduce to—to—unpopularity, I shall continue to visit him. I have sympathy with the erring,” he said, remembering that terrible evening at The Beeches.
A heavy hand descended upon Mr. Cole’s shoulder, and Colonel Berkeley’s handsome face shone at him.
“Right you are, Cole. You’re a little prig sometimes, but you are something of a man, sir—something of a man!”
Mr. Cole blushed with pleasure at this dubious compliment.