With slow and reluctant steps the worthy baronet proceeded from Markham’s chambers to the town-house of Mr. Martindale; and though he was a man of as much humanity as ninety-nine in a hundred, he was not very sorry when the servant who opened the door informed him that Signora Rivolta could not be seen; for intelligence had been just received from Brigland of the death of Mr. Martindale.
It seems that the letter which Mr. Price had written to Sir Andrew Featherstone was written just before the decease of Mr. Martindale, and that another had been despatched by the same day’s post to Colonel Rivolta immediately after the old gentleman’s departure from life. The Colonel did not trouble himself much about letters, and therefore handed over the communication to Signora Rivolta, who became thus suddenly and abruptly made acquainted with the event which Mr. Price in his considerateness would have conveyed to her circuitously and gradually. For though Mr. Price was rather cunning and dexterous as concerned pecuniary transactions, and made the business of conveyancing more profitable than many an honester man would have done, yet he was by no means an unfeeling man, or a man of rudeness or vulgarity of manners. He was, on the other hand, a man of great urbanity of manners, and altogether courteous, kind and gentle in his deportment. He never was accused or suspected of any thing like insensibility or unkindness: he was a most excellent father, and one of the best of husbands; and though he was not exceedingly conscientious in pecuniary affairs, he still would never have enriched himself at the expense of another’s misery and obvious sufferings. But when the affairs of old Mr. Martindale were put into his hands, and when he saw that the old gentleman’s property was so much beyond his wants and beyond his ideas, a temptation was thus presented to the man of law to take some little advantage of this ignorance.
As Mr. Martindale frequently amused himself with making wills, and as in all these drafts and directions he had uniformly stated that Mr. Price was to be one of his executors and residuary-legatee, the conveyancer thought it might be politic still to keep the old gentleman in the dark as to the real value and extent of his property. There is a casuistry which might represent such conduct as being perfectly honest; but we deal not in casuistry, and therefore we leave it with the stamp of our reprobation; and very much, no doubt, such men as Mr. Price will care for our reprobation.
CHAPTER XII.
“Trust not the frantic, or mysterious guide,
Nor stoop a captive to the schoolman’s pride.”
Savage.
Before we remove the scene of our narrative to Brigland again, it will be necessary to let our readers into the secret of the ill-omened appearance of the priest, at whose aspect our friend Markham so instinctively shuddered.