Meanwhile, the Earl of Etherington walked onward with his confidant, in the full triumph of successful genius.
“You see,” he said, “Jekyl, that I can turn a corner with any man in England. It was a proper blunder of yours, that you must extricate the fellow from the mist which accident had flung around him—you might as well have published the story of our rencontre at once, for every one can guess it, by laying time, place, and circumstance together; but never trouble your brains for a justification. You marked how I assumed my natural superiority over him—towered up in the full pride of legitimacy—silenced him even where the good company most do congregate. This will go to Mowbray through his agent, and will put him still madder on my alliance. I know he looks jealously on my flirtation with a certain lady—the dasher yonder—nothing makes a man sensible of the value of an opportunity, but the chance of losing it.”
“I wish to Heaven you would give up thoughts of Miss Mowbray!” said Jekyl; “and take Tyrrel's offer, if he has the means of making it good.”
“Ay, if—if. But I am quite sure he has no such rights as he pretends to, and that his papers are all a deception.—Why do you put your eye upon me as fixed as if you were searching out some wonderful secret?”
“I wish I knew what to think of your real bona fide belief respecting these documents,” said Jekyl, not a little puzzled by the steady and unembarrassed air of his friend.
“Why, thou most suspicious of coxcombs,” said Etherington, “what the devil would you have me say to you?—Can I, as the lawyers say, prove a negative? or, is it not very possible, that such things may exist, though I have never seen or heard of them? All I can say is, that of all men I am the most interested to deny the existence of such documents; and, therefore, certainly will not admit of it, unless I am compelled to do so by their being produced; nor then either, unless I am at the same time well assured of their authenticity.”
“I cannot blame you for your being hard of faith, my lord,” said Jekyl; “but still I think if you can cut out with your earldom, and your noble hereditary estate, I would, in your case, pitch Nettlewood to the devil.”
“Yes, as you pitched your own patrimony, Jekyl; but you took care to have the spending of it first.—What would you give for such an opportunity of piecing your fortunes by marriage?—Confess the truth.”
“I might be tempted, perhaps,” said Jekyl, “in my present circumstances; but if they were what they have been, I should despise an estate that was to be held by petticoat tenure, especially when the lady of the manor was a sickly fantastic girl, that hated me, as this Miss Mowbray has the bad taste to hate you.”
“Umph—sickly?—no, no, she is not sickly—she is as healthy as any one in constitution—and, on my word, I think her paleness only renders her more interesting. The last time I saw her, I thought she might have rivalled one of Canova's finest statues.”