"Travice," said Mr. Arkell, as Robert Carr took his departure, "I was glad to see your reception of this gentleman. Be to him a friend in any way that you can. It may be, that he will not find too many of them in Westerbury."
Mrs. Arkell tossed her head. "I am rather surprised that you should bring him here, and introduce him on this familiar footing. The past history of the father is not a passport for the son. I should not have cared so much had Charlotte and Sophy been away."
"Charlotte and Sophy! He'll not poison them. What are you thinking of, Charlotte? He has been reared a gentleman; he is a clergyman of the Church of England. Whatever may have been the truth of the past, he is not to blame for it."
Travice Arkell was full of sympathy. "How ill he looks!" he exclaimed; "though he seems to think nothing of it, and says it is the result of a hurt. Is it not curious that he should have met with Mrs. Dundyke? He says his mother was in some way related to the Dundykes."
"There, that will do, Travice," interposed Mrs. Arkell. "I shall dream of that Geneva lake to-night, and of seeing dead men in it. But, William," she added in a lower tone to her husband, "what a misfortune it will be for Betsey, should she have nothing left to live upon! She would have to go out as a housekeeper, or something of that sort."
Squire Carr's residence was a low, rambling, red-brick building, with a quantity of outhouses lying around it, and an avenue of oaks leading almost up to the low-porched entrance door. Pacing before this porch, a clay pipe in his mouth, and his dark hair uncovered to the September sun, was Benjamin Carr. He seemed in a moody study, from which the sound of wheels aroused him, and he saw Mr. Arkell driving up in his open carriage, a stranger sitting with him, and the groom in the back seat. Benjamin Carr wore a short velveteen shooting-coat—it set off his tall form to advantage; and Robert Carr thought what a fine man he was.
"Why, Benjamin, I did not know you were at home."
"I got here a day or two ago," returned Benjamin, putting aside his pipe, and shaking hands with Mr. Arkell. "The squire's slice of luck brought me. One of the girls wrote me word of it; so I've come to see whether I can't drop in for a few of the pickings."
It was an awkward answer, considering that Robert Carr was listening; perhaps he did not understand it. Mr. Arkell made rather a bustle of getting out, and of standing aside for Robert, telling his groom to take the horse round to the stables. "Is your father in, Benjamin?" he asked.
"For all I know. I have seen none of them since breakfast. Valentine's gone over to Eckford, I believe; but—here's the squire."