“I must go now. I am rather in haste.”
Haldane did not take the hand, but put his arm upon the clergyman’s shoulder.
“Well, good day,” he said. “Take my advice, though, and get a sensible wife as soon as possible.”
Santley tried to smile, but only succeeded in looking more pale and nervous than usual. With a few murmured words of adieu, he moved rapidly away.
Haldane watched him thoughtfully until he disappeared down the avenue.
“I wonder if that man can smile?” he said to himself. “No; I am afraid he is too horribly in earnest. I suppose, the women would call him handsome—spiritual; but I hate such pallid, waxen-featured, handsome dolls. A pretty shepherd, that, for a Christian flock to follow; a fellow who makes his very ignorance of this world constitute his claim to act as cicerone to the next. Fancy being jealous, actually jealous, of such a thing as that!”
He turned back into his laboratory and tried to dismiss Baptisto’s suggestion from his mind; but it was impossible. He could not disguise from himself that Santley, with his seraphic face and sad, earnest eyes, was the kind of creature whom the weaker sex adore, and that he was rendered doubly dangerous to women by the radiant mesmerism of a fascinating and voluptuous celestial superstition.