“You are light, Sir Thomas; the fuss he makes about morality and religion is a proof that he is.  In the meantime, I agree with you that there is little time to be lost.  The lawyers must set to work immediately; and the sooner the better, for I am naturally impatient.”

They then shook hands very cordially, and Dunroe took his leave.

The reader may have observed that in this conversation the latter reduced his account of the interview to mere generalities, a mode of reporting it which was agreeable to both, as it spared each of them some feeling.  Dunroe, for instance, never mentioned a syllable of Lucy’s having frankly avowed her passion for another; neither did Sir Thomas make the slightest allusion to the settled disinclination to marry him which he knew she all along felt.  Indifferent, however, as Dunroe naturally was to high-minded feeling or principle, he could not summon courage to dwell upon this attachment of Lucy to another.  A consciousness of his utter meanness and degradation of spirit in consenting to marry any woman under such circumstances, filled him with shame even to glance at it.  He feared, besides, that if her knavish father had heard it, he would at once have attributed his conduct to its proper motives—­that is to say, an eagerness to get into the possession and enjoyment of the large fortune to which she was entitled.  He himself, in his conversations with the baronet, never alluded to the subject of dowry, but placed his anxiety for the match altogether to the account of love.  So far, then, each was acting a fraudulent part toward the other.

The next morning, about the hour of eleven o’clock, Thomas Corbet—­foster-brother to the baronet, though a much younger man—­sent word that he wished to see him on particular business.  This was quite sufficient; for, as Corbet was known to be more deeply in his confidence than any other man living, he was instantly admitted.

“Well, Corbet,” said his master, “I hope there is nothing wrong.”

“Sir Thomas,” replied the other, “you have a right to be a happy and a thankful man this morning; and although I cannot mention the joyful intelligence with which I am commissioned, without grief and shame for the conduct of a near relation of my own, yet I feel this to be the happiest day of my life.”

“What the deuce!” exclaimed the baronet, starting to his feet—­“how is this?  What is the intelligence?”

“Rejoice, Sir Thomas—­rejoice and be thankful; but, in the meantime, pray sit down, if you please, and don’t be too much agitated.  I know how evil news, or anything that goes in opposition to your will, affects you:  the two escapes, for instance, of that boy.”

“Ha!  I understand you now,” exclaimed the baronet, whilst the very eyes danced in his head with a savage delight that was frightful, and, for the sake of human nature, painful to look upon, “I understand you now, Corbet—­he is dead! eh?  Is it not so?  Yes, yes—­it is—­it is true.  Well, you shall have a present of one hundred pounds for the intelligence.  You shall, and that in the course of five minutes.”