Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/113

1866.] lucrative occupation of drawing wills, settlements, and conveyances, and effecting loans, sales, and transfers. He visited the landed proprietors, and dined with them, and was a great favorite in the country.

"Justicing day" brought him many visits; so on that day he was always at his place of business. Indeed, a client was with him when Griffith called, and the young gentlemen had to wait in the outer office for full ten minutes.

Then a door opened and the client in question came out, looking mortified and anxious. It was Squire Peyton. At sight of Gaunt, who had risen to take his vacant place, Kate's father gave him a stiff nod, and an unfriendly glance, then hurried away.

Griffith was hurt at his manner. He knew very well Mr. Peyton looked higher for his daughter than Griffith Gaunt: but for all that the old gentleman had never shown him any personal dislike or incivility until this moment.

So Griffith could not but fear that Neville was somehow at the bottom of this, and that the combination was very strong against him. Now in thus interpreting Mr. Peyton's manner he fell into a very common error and fruitful cause of misunderstanding. We go and fancy that Everybody is thinking of us. But he is not: he is like us; he is thinking of himself.

"Well, well," thought Griffith, "if I am not to have her, what better place for me than the grave."

He entered Mr. Houseman's private room and opened his business at once.

But a singular concurrence of circumstances induced Lawyer Houseman to confide to a third party the substance of what passed between this young gentleman and himself. So, to avoid repetition, the best way will be to let Houseman tell this part of my tale, instead of me; and I only hope his communication, when it comes, may be half as interesting to my reader as it was to his hearer.

Suffice it for me to say that lawyer and client were closeted a good hour, and were still conversing together when a card was handed in to Mr. Houseman that seemed to cause him both surprise and pleasure.

"In five minutes," said he to the clerk. Griffith took the hint, and bade him good-bye directly.

As he went out, the gentleman who had sent in his card rose from a seat in the outer office to go in.

It was Mr. George Neville.

Griffith Gaunt and he saluted and scanned each other curiously. They little thought to meet again so soon. The clerks saw nothing more than two polite gentlemen passing each other.

The more Griffith thought of the approaching duel, the less he liked it. He was an impulsive man, for one thing; and with such, a cold fit naturally succeeds a hot one. And besides, as his heat abated, Reason and Reflection made themselves heard, and told him that in a contest with a formidable rival he was throwing away an advantage. After all, Kate had shown him great favor; she had ridden Neville's horse after him, and made him resign his purpose of leaving her; surely, then, she preferred him on the whole to Neville: yet he must go and risk his chance of possessing her upon a personal encounter, in which Neville was at least as likely to kill him as he to kill Neville. He saw too late that he was playing his rival's game. He felt cold and despondent, and more and more convinced that he should never marry Kate, but that she would very likely bury him.

With all this he was too game to recoil, and indeed he hated his rival too deeply. So, like many a man before him, he was going doggedly to the field against his judgement, with little to win and all to lose.

His deeper and more solemn anxieties were diversified by a lighter one. A few days ago he had invited half the county to bury Mr. Charlton on Saturday, the 19th of February. But now he had gone and fixed Friday the 18th for a duel. A fine thing, if he should be himself a corpse on Friday