Winterfield carelessly gathered the letters together, tossed them on the dining table at his side, and took the uppermost one of the little heap.
Fate was certainly against the priest on that evening.
The first letter that Winterfield opened led him off to another subject of conversation before he had read it to the end.
Father Benwell’s hand, already in his coat pocket, appeared again—empty.
“Here’s a proposal to me to go into Parliament,” said the Squire.
“What do you think of representative institutions, Father Benwell?
To my mind, representative institutions are on their last legs.
Honorable Members vote away more of our money every year.
They have no alternative between suspending liberty of speech, or sitting helpless while half a dozen impudent idiots stop the progress of legislation from motives of the meanest kind.
And they are not even sensitive enough to the national honor to pass a social law among themselves which makes it as disgraceful in a gentleman to buy a seat by bribery as to cheat at cards.
I declare I think the card-sharper the least degraded person of the two.
He doesn’t encourage his inferiors to be false to a public trust.
In short, my dear sir, everything wears out in this world—and why should the House of Commons be an exception to the rule?”
He picked up the next letter from the heap.
As he looked at the address, his face changed.
The smile left his lips, the gayety died out of his eyes.
Traveler, entreating for more notice with impatient forepaws applied to his master’s knees, saw the alteration, and dropped into a respectfully recumbent position. Father Benwell glanced sidelong off the columns of the newspaper, and waited for events with all the discretion, and none of the good faith, of the dog.
“Forwarded from Beaupark,” Winterfield said to himself.
He opened the letter—read it carefully to the end—thought over it—and read it again.
“Father Benwell!” he said suddenly.
The priest put down the newspaper.
For a few moments more nothing was audible but the steady tick-tick of the clock.
“We have not been very long acquainted,” Winterfield resumed. “But our association has been a pleasant one, and I think I owe to you the duty of a friend.
I don’t belong to your Church; but I hope you will believe me when I say that ignorant prejudice against the Catholic priesthood is not one of my prejudices.”
Father Benwell bowed, in silence.
“You are mentioned,” Winterfield proceeded, “in the letter which I have just read.”
“Are you at liberty to tell me the name of your correspondent?” Father Benwell asked.
“I am not at liberty to do that.
But I think it due to you, and to myself, to tell you what the substance of the letter is.
The writer warns me to be careful in my intercourse with you.
Your object (I am told) is to make yourself acquainted with events in my past life, and you have some motive which my correspondent has thus far failed to discover.
I speak plainly, but I beg you to understand that I also speak impartially.
I condemn no man unheard—least of all, a man whom I have had the honor of receiving under my own roof.”
He spoke with a certain simple dignity.
With equal dignity, Father Benwell answered.
It is needless to say that he now knew Winterfield’s correspondent to be Romayne’s wife.
“Let me sincerely thank you, Mr. Winterfield, for a candor which does honor to us both,” he said.
“You will hardly expect me—if I may use such an expression—to condescend to justify myself against an accusation which is an anonymous accusation so far as I am concerned.
I prefer to meet that letter by a plain proof; and I leave you to judge whether I am still worthy of the friendship to which you have so kindly alluded.”
With this preface he briefly related the circumstances under which he had become possessed of the packet, and then handed it to Winterfield—with the seal uppermost.
“Decide for yourself,” he concluded, “whether a man bent on prying into your private affairs, with that letter entirely at his mercy, would have been true to the trust reposed in him.”
He rose and took his hat, ready to leave the room, if his honor was profaned by the slightest expression of distrust.
Winterfield’s genial and unsuspicious nature instantly accepted the offered proof as conclusive.
“Before I break the seal,” he said, “let me do you justice.
Sit down again, Father Benwell, and forgive me if my sense of duty has hurried me into hurting your feelings.
No man ought to know better than I do how often people misjudge and wrong each other.”
They shook hands cordially.
No moral relief is more eagerly sought than relief from the pressure of a serious explanation.
By common consent, they now spoke as lightly as if nothing had happened.
Father Benwell set the example.