“Sir Robert and his men did, sir.”
“I'm not doubting that, you old house-leek. I know Sir Robert too well—I know the infernal—ahem; a most excellent loyal gentleman, with two or three fine estates, both here and in England; but he prefers living here, for reasons best known to himself and me, and—and to somebody else. Well, they burned Reilly out—but tell me this; did they catch the rascal himself? eh? here's five pounds for you, if you can say they have him safe.”
“That's rather a loose bargain, your honor,” replied the man with a smile; “for saying it?—why, what's to prevent me from saying it, if I wished?”
“None of your mumping, you old snapdragon; but tell me the truth, have they secured him hard and fast?”
“No, sir, he escaped them, and as report goes they know nothing about him, except that they haven't got him.”
Deep and speechless was the agony in which Helen sat during this short dialogue, her eyes having never once been withdrawn from the butler's countenance; but now that she had heard of her lover's personal safety, a thick, smothered sob, which, if it were to kill her, she could not repress, burst from her bosom. Unwilling that either her father or the servant should witness the ecstasy which she could not conceal, and feeling that another minute would disclose the delight which convulsed her heart and frame, she arose, and, with as much composure as she could assume, went slowly out of the room. On entering her apartment, she signed to her maid to withdraw, after which she closed and bolted the door, and wept bitterly. The poor girl's emotion, in fact, was of a twofold character; she wept with joy at Reilly's escape from the hands of his cruel and relentless enemy, and with bitter grief at the impossibility which she thought there existed that he should ultimately be able to keep out of the meshes which she knew Whitecraft would spread for him. The tears, however, which she shed abundantly, in due time relieved her, and in the course of an hour or two she was able to appear as usual in the family.
The reader may perceive that her father, though of an abrupt and cynical temper, was not a man naturally of a bad or unfeeling heart. Whatever mood of temper chanced to be uppermost influenced him for the time; and indeed it might be said that one half of his feelings were usually in a state of conflict with the other. In matters of business he was the very soul of integrity and honor, but in his views of public affairs he was uncertain and inconsistent; and of course his whole life, as a magistrate and public man, was a perpetual series of contradictions. The consequence of all this was, that he possessed but small influence, as arising from his personal character; but not so from his immense property, as well as from the fact that he was father to the wealthiest and most beautiful heiress in the province, or perhaps, so far as beauty was concerned, in the kingdom itself.
At length the day mentioned for the dinner arrived, and, at the appointed hour, so also did the guests. There were some ladies asked to keep Helen in countenance, but we need scarcely say, that as the list of them was made out by her thoughtless father, he paid, in the selection of some of them, very little attention to her feelings. There was the sheriff, Mr. Oxley, and his lady—the latter a compound in whom it was difficult to determine whether pride, vulgarity, or obesity prevailed. Where the sheriff had made his capture of her was never properly known, as neither of them belonged originally to that neighborhood in which he had, several years ago, purchased large property. It was said he had got her in London; and nothing was more certain than that she issued forth the English language clothed in an inveterate cockney accent. She was a high moralist, and a merciless castigator of all females who manifested, or who were supposed to manifest, even a tendency to walk out of the line of her own peculiar theory on female conduct. Her weight might be about eighteen stone, exclusive of an additional stone of gold chains and bracelets, in which she moved like a walking gibbet, only with the felon in it; and to crown all, she wore on her mountainous bosom a cameo nearly the size of a frying-pan. Sir Jenkins Joram, who took her down to dinner, declared, on feeling the size of the bracelets which encircled her wrists, that he labored for a short time under the impression that he and she were literally handcuffed together; an impression, he added, from which he was soon relieved by the consoling reflection that it was the sheriff himself whom the clergyman had sentenced to stand in that pleasant predicament. Of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hastings we have only to say that they were modest, sensible, unassuming women, without either parade or pretence, such, in fact, as you will generally meet among our well-bred and educated countrywomen. Lord Deilmacare was a widower, without family, and not a marrying man. Indeed, when pressed upon this subject, he was never known to deviate from the one reply.
“Why don't you marry again, my lord?—will you ever marry?”
“No, madam, I got enough of it,” a reply which, somehow, generally checked any further inquiry on the subject. Between Lady Joram and Mrs. Smellpriest there subsisted a singular analogy with respect to their conjugal attachments. It was hinted that her ladyship, in those secret but delicious moments of matrimonial felicity which make up the sugar-candy morsels of domestic life, used to sit with Sir Jenkins for the purpose, by judicious exercise, of easing, by convivial exercise, a rheumatic affection which she complained of in her right arm. There is nothing, however, so delightful as a general and loving sympathy between husband and wife; and here it was said to exist in perfection. Mrs. Smellpriest, on the other hand, was said to have been equally attached to the political principles of the noble captain, and to wonder why any clergyman should be suffered to live in the country but those of her own Church; such delightful men, for instance, as their curate, the Rev. Samson Strong, who was nothing more nor less than a divine bonfire in the eyes of the Christian! world. Such was his zeal against Papists, she said, as well as against Popery at large, that she never looked on him without thinking that there was a priest to be burned. Indeed Captain Smellpriest, she added, was under great obligations to him, for no sooner had his reverence heard of a priest taking earth in the neighborhood, than he lost no time in communicating the fact to her husband; after which he would kindly sit with and comfort her whilst fretting lest any mischief might befall her dear captain.