“The thief!” exclaimed my uncle; “we must never allow that. The scamp would break her heart. I am determined to prevent it. I shall let her know my opinion of him. I know all the villainous lot too well. Don’t be excited, Tonks. I can’t stand that. Give me her name and address; and I will go with the van myself, if necessary. I should think myself a party to it, if I did not stop it. She will soon see what I am.”
“I was going to tell you, but now I had better not,” Tony Tonks answered with a sly dry smile; “what good could you do, Mr. Orchardson? The lady would only laugh at you, even if she deigned to see you.”
“Nobody ever laughs at me. And as for deigning to see me,—why, the Queen herself would do it, the way I should put it.”
“Well, you have a good opinion of yourself. But you must keep quiet in this matter, unless you want to spoil my little game. The lady is the Lady Clara Voucher, daughter of the Earl of Clerinhouse, a very great heiress, and not bad looking. What more he can want is a puzzle to me. But it goes against the grain with him.”
“He shall never have her; he may take his oath of that,” said my uncle, bringing down his hand upon his knee, as if he were the father of the peerage.
“Well, this is a curious affair,” thought I; “how can he be taking to anybody else, after having cast his eyes on Kitty?”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE DUCHESS.
All these things compelled me to think about them, because they were so different from what might have been expected. When first I lost my wife, and knew that I had been robbed of her, I made up my mind for savage work, and nothing could be too wild for me. The greatest wrong that man can do to man had been done to me; for a stab to the bodily heart is better than the destruction of faith and love. But the care for my dear wife’s good name, (which would have been blasted, if ever it got abroad that she had eloped with the money), as well as many other tender thoughts, had kept me quiet, and conduced to stop me from any acts of violence. And this instinct of true love proved quite right; as all will confess who care to know the end of it.
Straitened as I was with my own cares, and sometimes buried in them, I could not help trying to lift if it were but the corner of the burden imposed by Heaven upon a man a thousandfold better and more noble. The only excuse I could make to myself, for the different way in which he bore his grief, was that he was bound to do it as a clergyman, and being so old, must be getting used to it. But I knew in my heart that this was paltry stuff; and that the true reason of the difference was, that he was a large man with faith in God; while I was a little one relying upon self. There was no way before me to cure that, for no man can set up his ladder on a cloud; still it did me good to know that he had found staple support, and was steadfast upon heaven.