vent
it, the agent, over his nocturnal drams, had taken sharp and cunning
counsel with himself concerning the young man.

The state of Mile End had been originally the result of indolence and
caprice on his part rather than of any set purpose of neglect. As soon,
however, as it was brought to his notice by Elsmere, who did it, to
begin with, in the friendliest way, it became a point of honour with
the agent to let the place go to the devil, nay, to hurry it there. For
some time notwithstanding, he avoided an open breach with the rector. He
met Elsmere's remonstrances by a more or less civil show of argument,
belied every now and then by the sarcasm of his coarse blue eye, and so
far the two men had kept outwardly on terms. Elsmere had reason to know
that on one or two occasions of difficulty in the parish Henslowe had
tried to do him a mischief. The attempts, however, had not greatly
succeeded, and their ill-success had probably excited in Elsmere a
confidence of ultimate victory which had tended to keep him cool in the
presence of Henslowe's hostility. But Henslowe had been all along merely
waiting for the squire. He had served the owner of the Murewell estate
for fourteen years, and if he did not know that owner's peculiarities by
this time, might he obtain certain warm corners in the next life to
which he was fond of consigning other people! It was not easy to cheat
the squire out of money, but it was quite easy to play upon his
ignorance of the details of English land management--ignorance
guaranteed by the learned habits of a lifetime--on his complete lack of
popular sympathy, and on the contempt felt by the disciple of Bismarck
and Mommsen for all forms of altruistic sentiment. The squire despised
priests. He hated philanthropic cants. Above all things he respected his
own leisure, and was abnormally, irritably sensitive as to any possible
inroads upon it.

All these things Henslowe knew, and all these things he utilised. He saw
the squire within forty-eight hours of his arrival at Murewell. His
fancy picture of Robert and his doings was introduced with adroitness,
and coloured with great skill, and he left the squire walking up and
down his library, chafing alternately at the monstrous fate which had
planted this sentimental agitator at his gates, and at the memory of his
own misplaced civilities towards the intruder. In the evening those
civilities were abundantly avenged, as we have seen.

Robert was much pe