and left the room with the utmost suavity. As for Mr Wentworth, it is
probable that his brother's serenity had quite the reverse of a soothing
effect upon his mind and temper. He rose from the table as soon as Jack
was gone, and for a long time paced about the room composing himself,
and planning what he was to do--so long, indeed, that Sarah, after
coming up softly to inspect, had cleared the table and put everything
straight in the room before the Curate discovered her presence. It was
only when she came up to him at last, with her little rustical curtsy,
to say that, please, her missis would like to see him for a moment in
the parlour, that Mr Wentworth found out that she was there. This
interruption roused him out of his manifold and complicated thoughts. "I
am too busy just now, but I will see Mrs Hadwin to-night," he said; "and
you can tell her that my brother has gone to get rooms at the Blue
Boar." After he had thus satisfied the sympathetic handmaiden, the
Curate crossed over to the closed door of Wodehouse's room and knocked.
The inmate there was still in bed, as was his custom, and answered Mr
Wentworth through his beard in a recumbent voice, less sulky and more
uncertain than on the previous night. Poor Wodehouse had neither the
nerve nor the digestion of his more splendid associate. He had no
strength of evil in himself when he was out of the way of it; and the
consequence of a restless night was a natural amount of penitence and
shame in the morning. He met the Curate with a depressed countenance,
and answered all his questions readily enough, even giving him the
particulars of the forged bills, in respect to which Thomas Wodehouse
the younger could not, somehow, feel so guilty as if it had been a name
different from his own which he had affixed to those fatal bits of
paper; and he did not hesitate much to promise that he would go abroad
and try to make a new beginning if this matter could be settled. Mr
Wentworth went out with some satisfaction after the interview, believing
in his heart that his own remonstrances had had their due effect, as it
is so natural to believe--for he did not know, having slept very
soundly, that it had rained a good deal during the night, and that Mrs
Hadwin's biggest tub (for the old lady had a passion for rain-water) was
immediately under poor Wodehouse's window, and kept him awake as it
filled and ran over all through the summer darkness. The recollection
of Jack Wentworth, ev