“I am truly happy to hear it. All I meant, as to knowledge of law, was to give you notice that there is some heavy trouble brewing, and that you must be prepared to meet some horrible accusations.”
“May I trespass further upon your kindness, to ask what their subject is?”
“Oh, nothing more than a very rash and unfounded charge of murder.”
Mr. Chope pronounced that last awful word in a deeply sepulchral manner, and riveted his little eyes into Bull Garnetʼs great ones. Mr. Garnet met his gaze as calmly as he would meet the sad clouded aspect of a dead rabbit, or hare, in a shop where he asked the price of them, and regarded their eyes as the test of their freshness. Chope could not tell what to make of it. The thing was beyond his experience.
But all this time Bull Garnet felt that every minute was costing him a year of his natural life, even if he ever got any chance of living it out.
“How does this concern me? Is it any one on our estates?”
“Yes, and the heir to ‘your estates.’ Young Mr. Cradock Nowell.”
Bull Garnet sighed very heavily; then he strode away, and came back again, with indignation swelling out the volume of his breast, and filling the deep dark channels of brow, and the turgid veins of his eyeballs.
“Whoever has done this thing is a fool; or a rogue—which means the same.”
“It may be so. It may be otherwise. We always hope for the best. Very likely he is innocent. Perhaps they are shooting at the pigeon in order to hit the crow.”