“I trust I have not been superfluous in offering mine assistance,” said the old man, something jealous that his proffered spiritual aid had been held rather intrusive. “I ask pardon if that is the case, I humbly ask pardon—I would not willingly be superfluous.”
The Colonel hastened to appease this new alarm of the watchful jealousy of his consequence, which, joined with a natural heat of temper which he could not always subdue, were the good man’s only faults.
They had regained their former friendly footing, when Roger Wildrake returned from the hut of Joceline, and whispered his master that his embassy had been successful. The Colonel then addressed the divine, and informed him, that as the Commissioners had already given up Woodstock, and as his uncle, Sir Henry Lee, proposed to return to the Lodge about noon, he would, if his reverence pleased, attend him up to the borough.
“Will you not tarry,” said the reverend man, with something like inquisitive apprehension in his voice, “to welcome your relatives upon their return to this their house?”
“No, my good friend,” said Colonel Everard; “the part which I have taken in these unhappy broils, perhaps also the mode of worship in which I have been educated, have so prejudiced me in mine uncle’s opinion, that I must be for some time a stranger to his house and family.”
“Indeed! I rejoice to hear it with all my heart and soul,” said the divine. “Excuse my frankness—I do indeed rejoice; I had thought—no matter what I had thought; I would not again give offence. But truly though the maiden hath a pleasant feature, and he, as all men say, is in human things unexceptionable, yet—but I give you pain—in sooth, I will say no more unless you ask my sincere and unprejudiced advice, which you shall command, but which I will not press on you superfluously. Wend we to the borough together—the pleasant solitude of the forest may dispose us to open our hearts to each other.”
They did walk up to the little town in company, and somewhat to Master Holdenough’s surprise, the Colonel, though they talked on various subjects, did not request of him any ghostly advice on the subject of his love to his fair cousin, while, greatly beyond the expectation of the soldier, the clergyman kept his word, and in his own phrase, was not so superfluous as to offer upon so delicate a point his unasked counsel.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.
Then are the harpies gone—Yet ere we perch
Where such foul birds have roosted, let us cleanse
The foul obscenity they’ve left behind them.