WYLDER'S HAjYD.
339
his hand — the Captain with his hands in the pockets of
his loose coat, and a sidelong glance from his yellow eyes.
CHAPTER LV.
THE BRANDON CONSERVATORY.
Captain Lake did look in at the Lodge in the morn-
ing, and remained an hour in conference with Mr. Jos
Larkin. I suppose everything went off pleasantly. For
although Stanley Lake looked very pale and vicious as ho
walked down to the iron gate of the Lodge, the good at-
torney's countenance shone with a serene and heavenly
light, so pure and bright, indeed, that I almost wonder
his dazzled servants, sitting along the wall while he read
and expounded that morning, did not respectfully petition
that a veil might be suspended over the seraphic efful-
gence.
Somehow his " Times " did not interest him at breakfast;
these parliamentary wrangles, commercial speculations, and
foreign disputes, are they not, after all, but melancholy
and dreary records of the merest worldliness? Jos Lar-
kin tossed the paper upon the sofa. French politics,
relations with Russia, commercial treaties, party combina-
tions, how men can so wrap themselves up in these things!
And he smiled ineffable pity over the crumpled newspaper
— on the poor souls in that sort of worldly limbo. In
which frame of mind he took from his coat pocket a copy
of Captain Lake's marriage settlement, and read over
again a covenant on the Captain's part that, with respect
to this particular estate of Five Oaks, he would do no act,