A piece of bread and a draught of beer might have been of use, but the money is of none. The man is dead.
My God!—cried Sir Arthur; turned a look of marked regard upon our hero, bowed and rode off.
Mr. Philip De Lancaster had of late stepped a little out of his non-elastic character, and been rambling from the castle every forenoon between the hours of breakfast and dinner. Nobody was curious to trace him in these excursions, but it could not fail to be discovered, that his visits were to the Spanish lady at the abbey house of Penruth. To say that Philip was in love with Mrs. Owen might be to mistake a habit for a passion; he was in the habit of turning his poney’s head abbey-ward, as soon as he had sallied from the castle-gate, and poney was in the habit of going on without any turn at all till he stopped at the aforesaid abbey door. When Philip dismounted, Mrs. Owen’s lacquey was also in the habit of ushering him to his lady’s sitting-room, where he silently took his chair and his chance for being spoken to, when the lady was in the humour and at leisure to speak to him.
The first remark, that had ever dropped from Mr. De Lancaster with respect to Philip’s absence, occurred in his discourse with the Wilsons about John’s education, and it so happened that Mrs. Owen in her tete à tete that very morning had been rather more disposed to extort a conversation than was usual with her, when the following very interesting dialogue ensued.
I conclude, said the lady, that this extraordinary melancholy, which seems to hang eternally upon you, my good friend, can only be accounted for by your concern for Mrs. De Lancaster’s dismal state of health and spirits.
Not at all, said Philip: that’s not it.
What is it then? What in the name of wonder can it be?
I can’t tell. It comes of its own accord.
I don’t know how to believe you. There must be some cause: as sure as can be you have caught the hip of your hypochondriac wife.
I have nothing to do with any hip of hers. I never go near her: that’s agreed between us.