“I’ll attend at their investigation,” he said, with a smile, “which, if you were not particularly interested, you’d find not bad fun, Mr. Wentworth. These private attempts at law are generally very amusing. I’ll attend and look after your interests; but you had better see that this Tom Wodehouse—I remember the scamp—he used to be bad enough for anything—don’t give you the slip and get out of the way. Find out if you can where he has been living these two days. I’ll attend to the other matter, too,” the lawyer said, cheerfully, shaking hands with his new client; and the Curate went away with a vague feeling that matters were about to come right somehow, at which he smiled when he came to think of it, and saw how little foundation he had for such a hope. But his hands were full of business, and he had no time to consider his own affairs at this particular moment. It seemed to him a kind of profanity to permit Lucy to remain under the same roof with Wodehouse, even though he was her brother; and Mr. Proctor’s inquiries had stimulated his own feeling. There was a certain pleasure, besides, in postponing himself and his own business, however important, to her and her concerns; and it was with this idea that he proceeded to the house of his aunts, and was conducted to a little private sitting-room appropriated to the sole use of Miss Leonora, for whom he had asked. As he passed the door of the drawing-room, which was ajar, he glanced in, and saw his aunt Dora bending over somebody who wept, and heard a familiar voice pouring out complaints, the general sound of which was equally familiar, though he could not make out a word of the special subject. Frank was startled, notwithstanding his preoccupations, for it was the same voice which had summoned him to Wentworth Rectory which now poured out its lamentations in the Miss Wentworths’ drawing-room in Carlingford. Evidently some new complication had arisen in the affairs of the family. Miss Leonora was in her room, busy with the books of a Ladies’ Association, of which she was treasurer. She had a letter before her from the missionary employed by the society, which was a very interesting letter, and likely to make a considerable sensation when read before the next meeting. Miss Leonora was taking the cream off this piece of correspondence, enjoying at once itself and the impression it would make. She was slightly annoyed when her nephew came in to disturb her. “The others are in the drawing-room, as usual,” she said. “I can’t imagine what Lewis could be thinking of, to bring you here. Louisa’s coming can make no difference to you.”
“So Louisa has come? I thought I heard her voice. What has happened to bring Louisa here?” said the Curate, who was not sorry to begin with an indifferent subject. Miss Leonora shook her head and took up her letter.
“She is in the drawing-room,” said the strong-minded aunt. “If you have no particular business with me, Frank, you had better ask herself: of course, if you want me, I am at your service—but otherwise I am busy, you see.”
“And so am I,” said Mr. Wentworth, “as busy as a man can be whose character is at stake. Do you know I am to be tried tomorrow? But that is not what I came to ask you about.”
“I wish you would tell me about it,” said Miss Leonora. She got up from her writing-table and from the missionary’s letter, and abandoned herself to the impulses of nature. “I have heard disagreeable rumours. I don’t object to your reserve, Frank, but things seem to be getting serious. What does it mean?”
The Curate had been much braced in his inner man by his short interview with John Brown; that, and the representative position he held, had made a wonderful change in his feelings: besides, a matter which was about to become so public could not be ignored. “It means only that a good many people in Carlingford think me a villain,” said Mr. Wentworth: “it is not a flattering idea; and it seems to me, I must say, an illogical induction from the facts
