and bowed, as though he would disarm his
adversary by humbling himself before him. Sir John Chester again exclaimed, with
an air of great gaiety, »Now, really, this is a most remarkable meeting!« and
took a pinch of snuff with his usual self-possession.
    »Mr. Haredale,« said Gashford, stealthily raising his eyes, and letting them
drop again when they met the other's steady gaze, »is too conscientious, too
honourable, too manly, I am sure, to attach unworthy motives to an honest change
of opinions, even though it implies a doubt of those he holds himself. Mr.
Haredale is too just, too generous, too clear-sighted in his moral vision, to -«
    »Yes, sir!« he rejoined with a sarcastic smile, finding the secretary
stopped. »You were saying -«
    Gashford meekly shrugged his shoulders, and looking on the ground again, was
silent.
    »No, but let us really,« interposed Sir John at this juncture, »let us
really, for a moment, contemplate the very remarkable character of this meeting.
Haredale, my dear friend, pardon me if I think you are not sufficiently
impressed with its singularity. Here we stand, by no previous appointment or
arrangement, three old schoolfellows, in Westminster Hall; three old boarders in
a remarkably dull and shady seminary at Saint Omer's, where you, being Catholics
and of necessity educated out of England, were brought up; and where I, being a
promising young Protestant at that time, was sent to learn the French tongue
from a native of Paris!«
    »Add to the singularity, Sir John,« said Mr. Haredale, »that some of you
Protestants of promise are at this moment leagued in yonder building, to prevent
our having the surpassing and unheard-of privilege of teaching our children to
read and write - here - in this land, where thousands of us enter your service
every year, and to preserve the freedom of which, we die in bloody battles
abroad, in heaps: and that others of you, to the number of some thousands as I
learn, are led on to look on all men of my creed as wolves and beasts of prey,
by this man Gashford. Add to it besides, the bare fact that this man lives in
society, walks the streets in broad day - I was about to say, holds up his head,
but that he does not - and it will be strange, and very strange, I grant you.«
    »Oh! you