“No, thank God! There’s been enow of the name; and after the son is gone, I hope we shall have no more of the breed.”
“Is Mrs. Norwynne, the son’s wife, at the palace?”
“What, master! did not you know what’s become of her?”
“Any accident?—”
“Ha, ha, ha! yes. I can’t help laughing—why, master, she made a mistake, and went to another man’s bed—and so her husband and she were parted—and she has married the other man.”
“Indeed!” cried Henry, amazed.
“Ay, indeed; but if it had been my wife or yours, the bishop would have made her do penance in a white sheet; but as it was a lady, why, it was all very well—and any one of us, that had been known to talk about it, would have been sent to Bridewell straight. But we did talk, notwithstanding.”
The malicious joy with which the peasant told this story made Henry believe (more than all the complaints the man uttered) that there had been want of charity and Christian deportment in the whole conduct of the bishop’s family. He almost wished himself back on his savage island, where brotherly love could not be less than it appeared to be in this civilised country.
CHAPTER XLV.
As Henry and his son, after parting from the poor labourer, approached the late bishop’s palace, all the charms of its magnificence, its situation, which, but a few hours before, had captivated the elder Henry’s mind, were vanished; and, from the mournful ceremony he had since been witness of, he now viewed this noble edifice but as a heap of rubbish piled together to fascinate weak understandings, and to make even the wise and religious man, at times, forget why he was sent into this world.