“Oh, I knew it from the very fust,” complacently remarked Tugmutton, taking his leg on his knee, and lolling back a little with the most indifferent air in the world, “I ain’t astonished. My gosh! no, you can’t astonish me. I’m above it.”
“That’s because you have a great mind, Charles,” said Harrington, jestingly. “Now just use your talents in cheering up your father—that’s a good boy.”
“I’ll do it, Mr. Harrington,” replied the cheerful youth, jumping up to let Harrington out, with his pear-face shining gleefully. “I’ll cheer him up so that nobody’ll ever know him again. Good bye, Mr. Harrington. Call again.”
Nodding pleasantly, Harrington departed, while Tugmutton waved his big paw with a lofty air, like a king dismissing his prime-minister after a cabinet council, and closed the door after him.
In the passage below, Harrington met Mrs. Eastman, and mentioned that he intended to bring Antony there that evening after dark.
“Of course,” he added, “there is no danger of the servants mentioning that there are colored men in the house. It would not do to have it gossiped about.”
“No, indeed,” returned Mrs. Eastman, smiling. “They have all, except little Bridget, been with us for years, and are like part of the family. Not the least danger of them. You know, John, we have had fugitives here several times before.
“Yes, I know that,” he replied, laughing.
After a minute’s further conversation, he departed, and went home to breakfast, without having asked for Emily, or seen Muriel. To tell the truth, a feeling of trepidation—a sense of some gathering mystery which made his heart tremble—had grown upon Harrington since he had left Emily the day before, and he shrank in spirit from meeting her or Muriel. He felt darkly that something of import, closely affecting him, remained undisclosed in the mutual relations of himself and his friends. The words of Wentworth—“because it has been played upon”—rang in his memory like a bell. Undoubtedly, Harrington would have unriddled the mystery almost as quickly as Muriel had done, but the blundering avowal of Wentworth that he was Muriel’s betrothed, stood in the way of his sight, and baffled him.