"Even your face," continued Sir Sidney, "comes upon me like a dream of the past; and I feel, in speaking with you, as if I had just got my studentship at Christ Church, and were in those bright days again, when the boy, standing on the verge of manhood, grasps at the crown of thorns before him, as if it were a diadem of stars. However, I feel toward you like an old friend, and shall treat you as such, which means--as one of the flippant books of the present day asserts--that I shall give you a very bad dinner."
"Do, do!" cried Burrel, shaking the hand his guest held out to him as he was about to depart--"do, do! and I will find a way to avenge myself without difficulty."
"How do you mean!" demanded the baronet, pausing.
"By coming for another very soon," answered his companion. "So, I dare you to keep your word."
"I certainly shall," rejoined Sir Sidney Delaware, "if such be the penalty; and they parted, with feelings entirely changed on both sides since their meeting at the house of Mr. Tims."
CHAPTER VIII.
Whether the succeeding hours of the day on which Sir Sidney Delaware first visited Henry Burrel, did or did not pass with any degree of impatience, felt on the part of the latter, it is difficult to say. Burrel had an habitual dislike to the display of what he felt, and except on special occasions, where the stirred-up feelings broke through all customary restraint, there might be many far deeper things passing in his bosom than the eye of a casual observer could discover from his face.
The hours of that day seemed to fly in perfect tranquillity. He visited the widow's cottage twice, and marked with pleasure that a change for the better had taken place in her son; he called upon Mrs. Darlington at the inn, gossiped over a thousand subjects of tittle-tattle, and sketched out a plan for re-building her house--a consideration which seemed to give the good lady so much pleasant occupation, that Burrel could scarcely find it in his heart to regret that her house had been burned at all. He then strolled home to write letters, remarking, with little further comment as he did so, that his silent servant, Harding, was walking on the other side of the way, in quiet conversation with the vulgar person who had been for a short time one of his own companions in the London coach.
Nothing, in short, through the whole day, or the ensuing evening, could betray that the hours were at all weary to Henry Burrel; and the only circumstance which led his servant--who had eyes sufficiently inquisitive and acute--to believe that his master looked upon the approaching visit with more than ordinary interest, was, that the next morning, instead of sleeping soundly, as usual, till he was called, he rang his bell somewhat impatiently full five minutes before his ordinary hour of rising.
Giving the necessary orders for his dressing apparatus to be brought up to the mansion before dinner, Burrel sallied forth as soon as he was dressed, and took his way toward the park gate. He paused upon the bridge, however, and for a moment gazed up the long open space of park lawn, broken by old elms and oaks, with the stream flowing calmly on in the midst, and the swans dipping quietly into its waters, and the whole, in the soft morning sunshine, bearing an air of peace, with which even the gray building at the end of the vista harmonized full well.