o appear at
Wychecombe, disguised, and under an assumed name. He proposed venturing
on this step, because circumstances put it in his power, to give what he
thought would be received as a sufficient excuse, should his conduct
excite comment.

Sir Reginald Wychecombe was a singular, but by no means an unnatural
compound of management and integrity. His position as a Papist had
disposed him to intrigue, while his position as one proscribed by
religious hostility, had disposed him to be a Papist. Thousands are made
men of activity, and even of importance, by persecution and
proscription, who would pass through life quietly and unnoticed, if the
meddling hand of human forethought did not force them into situations
that awaken their hostility, and quicken their powers. This gentleman
was a firm believer in all the traditions of his church, though his
learning extended little beyond his missal; and he put the most implicit
reliance on the absurd, because improbable, fiction of the Nag's Head
consecration, without having even deemed it necessary to look into a
particle of that testimony by which alone such a controversy could be
decided. In a word, he was an instance of what religious intolerance has
ever done, and will probably for ever continue to do, with so wayward a
being as man.

Apart from this weakness, Sir Reginald Wychecombe had both a shrewd and
an inquiring mind. His religion he left very much to the priests; but of
his temporal affairs he assumed a careful and prudent supervision. He
was much richer than the head of the family; but, while he had no
meannesses connected with money, he had no objection to be the possessor
of the old family estates. Of his own relation to the head of this
family, he was perfectly aware, and the circumstance of the half-blood,
with all its legal consequences, was no secret to him. Sir Reginald
Wychecombe was not a man to be so situated, without having recourse to
all proper means, in order, as it has become the fashion of the day to
express it, "to define his position." By means of a shrewd attorney, if
not of his own religious, at least of his own political opinions, he had
ascertained the fact, and this from the mouth of Martha herself, that
Baron Wychecombe had never married; and that, consequently, Tom and his
brothers were no more heirs at law to the Wychecombe estate, than he was
in his own person. He fully understood, too, that there _was_ no heir at
law; and that the lands m