ver the fire in their own room. And the moment
that Aunt Letty left the table Mr. Prendergast arose also. He was
suffering, he said, cruelly from headache, and would ask permission
to go to his chamber. It would have been impossible for him to have
sat there pretending to sip his wine with Herbert Fitzgerald.

After this Herbert again went to his father, and then, in the
gloom of the evening, he found Mr. Somers in the office, a little
magistrate's room, that was used both by him and by Sir Thomas. But
nothing passed between them. Herbert had nothing to tell. And then at
about nine he also went up to his bedroom. A more melancholy day than
that had never shed its gloom upon Castle Richmond.

CHAPTER XX.

TWO WITNESSES.

Mr. Prendergast had given himself two days to do all that was to
be done, before he told Herbert Fitzgerald the whole of the family
history. He had promised that he would then let him know all that
there was to be known; and he had done so advisedly, considering
that it would be manifestly unjust to leave him in the dark an hour
longer than was absolutely necessary. To expect that Sir Thomas
himself should, with his own breath and his own words, make the
revelation either to his son or to his wife, was to expect a manifest
impossibility. He would, altogether, have sank under such an
effort, as he had already sank under the effort of telling it to Mr.
Prendergast; nor could it be left to the judgment of Sir Thomas to
say when the story should be told. He had now absolutely abandoned
all judgment in the matter. He had placed himself in the hands of a
friend, and he now expected that that friend should do all that there
was to be done. Mr. Prendergast had therefore felt himself justified
in making this promise.

But how was he to set about the necessary intervening work, and how
pass the intervening hours? It had already been decided that Mr.
Abraham Mollett, when he called, should be shown, as usual, into the
study, but that he should there find himself confronted, not with Sir
Thomas, but with Mr. Prendergast. But there was some doubt whether
or no Mr. Mollett would come. It might be that he had means of
ascertaining what strangers arrived at Castle Richmond; and it
might be, that he would, under the present circumstances, think it
expedient to stay away. This visit, however, was not to take place
till the second day after that on which Mr. Prendergast had heard the
story; and, in the meant