" replied the other; "that's none of your
affair. I'll go immediately and see Skipton."

The priest observed that honest Anthony looked still graver at the
mention of this name. "If you don't go," he added, "until a couple of
days hence, I'd like to see you again, about this hour, the day afther
tomorrow."

"Whether I'll be here, or whether I won't is more than I know. I may be
brought to judgment before then, and so may you. You may come then, or
you may stay away, just as you like. If you come, perhaps I'll see you,
and perhaps I won't. So now good-by! Thank goodness we are not depending
on you!"

Anthony then slunk out of the room with a good deal of hesitation in his
manner, and on leaving the hall-door he paused for a moment, and seemed
disposed to return. At length he decided, and after lingering awhile,
took his way toward Constitution Hill.

This interview with the priest disturbed Corbet very much. His
selfishness, joined to great caution and timidity of character, rendered
him a very difficult subject for any man to wield according to his
purposes. There could be no doubt that he entertained feelings of the
most diabolical resentment and vengeance against the baronet, and yet it
was impossible to get out of him the means by which he proposed to visit
them upon him. On leaving Father M'Mahon, therefore, he experienced
a state of alternation between a resolution to make disclosures and a
determination to be silent and work out his own plans. He also feared
death, it is true: but this was only when those rare visitations of
conscience occurred that were awakened by superstition, instead of an
enlightened and Christian sense of religion. This latter was a word
he did not understand, or rather one for which he mistook superstition
itself. Be this as it may, he felt uneasy, anxious, and irresolute,
wavering between the right and the wrong, afraid to take his stand by
either, and wishing, if he could, to escape the consequences of both.
Other plans, however, were ripening as well as his, under the management
of those who were deterred by none of his cowardice or irresolution. The
consideration of this brings us to a family discussion; which it becomes
our duty to detail before we proceed any further in our narrative.

On the following day, then, nearly the same party of which we have
given an account in an early portion of this work, met in the same
eating-house we have already described; the only difference bei