“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.

The dinner passed as all dinners usually do.  They hobnobbed, of course, and indulged in that kind of promiscuous conversation which cannot well be reported.  From a feeling of respect to Helen, no allusion was made either to the burning of Reilly’s property or to Reilly personally.  The only person who had any difficulty in avoiding the subject was the old squire himself, who more than once found the topic upon his lips, but with a kind of short cough he gulped it down, and got rid of it for the time.  In what manner he might treat the act itself was a matter which excited a good deal of speculation in the minds of those who were present.  He was known to be a man who, if the whim seized him to look upon it as a cowardly and vindictive proceeding, would by no means scruple to express his opinions strongly against it; whilst, on the other hand, if he measured it in connection with his daughter’s forbidden attachment to Reilly, he would, of course, as vehemently express his approbation of the outrage.  Indeed, they were induced to conclude that this latter view of it was that which he was most likely to take, in consequence of the following proposal, which, from any other man, would have been an extraordinary one: 

“Come, ladies, before you leave us we must have one toast; and I shall give it in order to ascertain whether we have any fair traitresses among us, or any who are secretly attached to Popery or Papists.”