“Even so, please your Excellency,” replied Hartley; “not, I think, to cure him of any complaint, but to give him the opportunity of catching one, which would silence all enquiries.”
“The matter shall be closely looked into. But how miserably careless the young man's friends must have been to let a raw lad go into the world with such a companion and guide as Tom Hillary, and such a sum as a thousand pounds in his pocket. His parents had better have knocked him on the head. It certainly was not done like canny Northumberland, as my servant Winter calls it.”
“The youth must indeed have had strangely hard-hearted, or careless parents,” said Mrs. Witherington, in accents of pity.
“He never knew them, madam,” said Hartley; “there was a mystery on the score of his birth. A cold, unwilling, and almost unknown hand, dealt him out his portion when he came of lawful age, and he was pushed into the world like a bark forced from shore, without rudder, compass, or pilot.”
Here General Witherington involuntarily looked to his lady, while, guided by a similar impulse, her looks were turned upon him. They exchanged a momentary glance of deep and peculiar meaning, and then the eyes of both were fixed on the ground.
“Were you brought up in Scotland?” said the lady, addressing herself, in a faltering voice, to Hartley—“And what was your master's name?”
“I served my apprenticeship with Mr. Gideon Gray of the town of Middlemas,” said Hartley.
“Middlemas! Gray?” repeated the lady, and fainted away.
Hartley offered the succours of his profession; the husband flew to support her head, and the instant that Mrs. Witherington began to recover, he whispered to her, in a tone betwixt entreaty and warning, “Zilia, beware—beware!”
Some imperfect sounds which she had begun to frame, died away upon her tongue.