While these things were going on at the gate of Brownlows, a totally different scene was being enacted in Masterton. Mr. Brownlow was at his office, occupied with his business and the people in his house, and the hundred affairs which make up a man’s life. And as he had little time to brood over it, it had very much gone out of his mind how near he was to the crisis of his fate. An unexperienced sailor when he sees the port near is apt to be lulled into a dream of safety, though the warier seaman knows that it is the most dangerous moment. Mr. Brownlow was not inexperienced, but yet he allowed himself to be deluded into this sense of security after all his terrors. Young Powys came to business every day, and was very steady and regular, and a little disconsolate, evidently having nothing in his mind which could alarm his employer. When Mr. Brownlow looked up and saw the young fellow going steadily and sadly about his business, it sometimes gave him a sense of compunction, but it no longer filled him with fear. He had come to think the youth was harmless, and with the base instinct of human nature no longer cared for him. At least he cared for him in a different way; he promised to himself to make it all up to him afterward—to be his providence, and looked after him and establish him in the world—to give him no reason to repent having entrusted his fortunes to his hands. This was how Mr. Brownlow was thinking; and he had succeeded in making himself believe that this course was far the best for Powys. As for justice, it was rarely to be had under any circumstances. This young fellow had no more right to it than another; probably if mere justice had been dealt to him it would have been the ruin of him, as well as the ruin of other people. His real advantage after all was what Mr. Brownlow studied. Such thoughts by dint of practice became easier and more natural. The lawyer actually began to feel and believe that for every body concerned he was taking the best course; and the September days wore on, blazing, sultry, splendid, with crack of guns over the stubble, and sound of mirth in-doors, where every room was full and every association cheerful. It would only have been making Powys uncomfortable (Mr. Brownlow reflected) to have invited him at that moment among so many people, even if the accident with Sara had not prevented it. By and by, when all was safe, Sara should go away in her turn to visit her friends, and Powys should be had out to Brownlows, and have the remains of the sport, and be received with paternal kindness. This was the plan Mr. Brownlow had formed, and in the mean time he was cheerful and merry, and no way afraid of his fate.

Things were so when one morning he received a sudden message from old Mrs. Fennell. He had not been to see her for a long time. He had preferred, as far as possible, to ignore her very existence. His own conduct appeared to him in a different light when he saw her. It was blacker, more heinous, altogether vile, when he caught the reflection of it as in a distorted mirror in the old woman’s suggestions. And it made Mr. Brownlow very uncomfortable. But this morning the summons was urgent. It was conveyed in a note from his mother-in-law herself. The billet was written on a scrap of paper, in a hand which had never been good, and was now shaky and irregular with old age. “I want to speak to you particular.” Mrs. Fennell wrote. “It’s about old Nancy and her goings on. There’s something astir that is against your advantage and the children. Don’t waste any time, but come to me;” and across the envelope she had written Immediate in letters half an inch long. Mr. Brownlow had a momentary thrill, and then he smiled to himself in the imbecility of self-delusion. “Some fancy she has taken into her head,” he said. Last time she had sent for him her fears had come to nothing, and his fears, which were exaggerated, as he now thought, had worn out all his capabilities of feeling. He took it quite calmly now. When he had freed himself of his more pressing duties, he took his hat, and went leisurely across the market-place, to his mother-in-law’s lodgings. The door was opened to him by Nancy, in whose looks he discovered nothing particular; and it did not even strike him as singular that she followed him up stairs, and went in after him to Mrs. Fennell’s sitting-room. The old lady herself was sitting in a great chair, with her foot upon a high footstool, and all her best clothes on, as for an occasion of great solemnity. Her head was in continued palsied motion, and her whole figure trembling with excitement. She did not even wait until Mr. Brownlow had taken the chair which Nancy offered him with unusual politeness. “Shut the door,” she cried. “Nancy, don’t you go near Mr. Brownlow with your wiles, but shut the door and keep in your own place. Keep in your own place—do; and don’t fuss about a gentleman as if that was to change his opinion, you old fool, at your age.”

“I’m but doing my duty,” said Nancy; “it’s little change my wiles could make on a gentleman—never at no age as I know on—and never with Mr. Brownlow—”

“Hold your peace,” cried Mrs. Fennell. “I know your tricks. You’re old, and you should know better; but a woman never thinks as it’s all over with her. John Brownlow, you look in that woman’s face and listen to me. You’ve given her food and clothes and a roof over her head for years and years, and a wage that I never could see the reason for; and here she’s been a-conspiring and a-treating with your enemies. I’ve found her out, though I am old and feeble. Ne’er a one of them can escape me. I tell you she’s been conspiring with your enemies. I don’t say that you’ve been overkind to me; but I can’t sit by and see my Bessie’s children wronged; and I’ve brought you here to set you face to face and hear what she’s got to say.”

Mr. Brownlow listened to her without changing countenance; he held his breath hard, and when she ceased speaking he let it go with a long respiration, such as a man draws after a great shock. But that was the only sign of emotion he showed; partly because he was stunned by the unexpected blow; partly because he felt that her every word betrayed him, and that nothing but utter self-command could do him any good.

“What does this mean?” he said, turning from Mrs. Fennell to Nancy. “Who are my enemies? If you have any thing to say against Nancy, or if Nancy has any thing to say—”

“She’s a traitor,” cried Mrs. Fennell, with a voice which rose almost to a scream. “She’s a real traitor;—she eats your bread, and she’s betrayed you. That’s what I mean and it’s as clear as day.”

All this time Nancy stood steadily, stolidly by, with her hand on the back of the chair, not defiant but watchful. She had no wish to lose her place, and her wages, and her comforts; but yet, if she were sent away, she had a claim upon the other side. She had made herself a friend like the unjust steward. And she stood and watched and saw all that passed, and formed her conclusions.

Therefore she was in no way disturbed when Mr. Brownlow turned round and looked her in the face. He was very steady and self-possessed, yet she saw by the way that he turned round on his chair, by the grasp he took of the back of it, by the movement of his eyelids, that every word had told upon him. “You must speak a little more plainly,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “Perhaps you will give me your own account of it, Nancy. Whom have you been conspiring with? Who are my enemies? I think I am tolerably at peace with all the world, and I don’t know.”

Nancy paused with momentary hesitation, whether to speak the simple truth, and see the earthquake which would ensue, which was a suggestion made by the dramatic instinct within her—or whether to keep on the safe side and deny all knowledge of it. If she had been younger, probably she would have preferred the former for the sake of excitement; but being old she chose the latter. She grew meek under Mr. Brownlow’s eyes, so meek that he felt it an outrage on his good sense, and answered softly as became a woman anxious to turn away wrath.

“Nor me, sir,” said Nancy, “I don’t know. If I heard of one as was your enemy, it would be reason enough to me for never looking nigh, him. I’ve served you and yours for long, and it’s my place to be faithful. I’ve been a-seeing of some old friends as lives a little bit out o’ Masterton. I’m but a servant, Mr. Brownlow, but I’ve some friends; and I never heard as you was one to think as poor folks had no heart. It was a widow woman, as has seen better days; it ain’t much I can do for her, but she’s old, and she’s poor, and I go to see her a bit times and times. I hope there ain’t nothing in that that displeases you. If I stayed longer than I ought last time—”

“What is all this to me?” said Mr. Brownlow. “Who is your widow woman? Do you want me to do any thing for her? has she a family? There are plenty of charities in Masterton if she belongs to the place. But it does not seem worth while to have brought me here for this.”

“You know better than that, John Brownlow,” said Mrs. Fennel, in a kind of frenzy. “If it was any poor woman, what would I have cared? Let ’em starve, the hussies, as brings it all on themselves. There’s but one woman as would trouble me, and you know who it is, John Brownlow; and that old witch there, she knows, and it’s time to put a stop to it all. It’s time to put a stop to it all, I say. She’s a-carrying on with that woman; and my Bessie’s children will be robbed before my very eyes; and I’m a poor old creature, and their own father as ought to take their part! I tell you, it’s that woman as she’s a-carrying on with; and they’ll be robbed and ruined, my pretty dears, my Bessie’s children! and she’ll have it all, that wretch! I’d kill her, I’d strangle her, I’d murder her, if it was me!”

Mrs. Fennell’s eyes were blood-shot, and rolled in their sockets wildly—her head shook with palsied rage—her voice stammered and staggered—and she lifted her poor old lean hands with wild, incoherent gestures. She was half-mad with passion and excitement. She, who was so terribly in earnest, so eager in her insane desire to save him, was in reality the traitor whom he had most to fear; and Mr. Brownlow had his senses sufficiently about him to perceive this. He exerted himself to calm her down and soothe her. “I will see after it—I will see after it,” he said. “I will speak to Nancy—don’t excite yourself.” As for Mrs. Fennell, not his persuasion, but her own passion wore her out presently, and reduced her to comparative calm; after awhile she sank into silence, and the half doze, half stupor of extreme age. When this re-action had come on, Mr. Brownlow left the room, making a sign to Nancy to follow him, which the old woman did with gradually-rising excitement, feeling that now indeed her turn had come. But he did not take her apart, as she had hoped and supposed, to have a desperate passage of arms. He turned round on the stair, though the landlady stood below within hearing ready to open the door, and spoke to her calmly and coldly. “Has she been long like this?” he said, and looked Nancy so steadily in the face that, for the first time, she was discomfited, and lost all clue to his meaning. She stood and stared at him for a minute, not knowing what to say.

“Has she been long like this?” Mr. Brownlow repeated a little sharply. “I must see after a doctor at once. How long has it lasted? I suppose no one can tell but you?”

“It’s lasted—but I don’t know, sir,” said Nancy, “I don’t know; I couldn’t say, as it was nothing the matter with her head. She thinks as there’s a foundation. It’s her notion as I’ve found out—”

“That will do,” said Mr. Brownlow; “I have no curiosity about your friends. It is your mistress’s health I am thinking of. I will call on Dr. Bayley as I go back; and you will see that she is kept quiet, and has every attention. I am grieved to see her in such an excited state. And, by the way, you will have the goodness not to leave her again. If your friends require your visits, let me know, and I will send a nurse. If it has been neglect that has brought this on, you may be sure it will tell on yourself afterward,” Mr. Brownlow added, as he went out. All this was said in the presence of the mistress of the house, who heard and enjoyed it. And he went away without another look at her, without another word, without praying for her silence, or pleading with her for her secret, as she had expected. Nancy was confounded, notwithstanding all her knowledge. She stood and stared after him with a sinking heart, wondering if there were circumstances she did not know, which held him harmless, and whether after all it had been wise of her to attach herself to the cause of his adversaries. She was disappointed with the effect she had produced—disappointed of the passage of arms she had expected, and the keen cross-examination which she had been prepared to baffle. She looked so blank that the landlady, looking on, felt that she too could venture on a passing arrow.

“You’ll take my word another time, Nancy,” she said. “I told you as it was shameful neglect to go and leave her all by herself, and her so old and weakly, poor soul! You don’t mind the likes of us, but you’ll have to mind what your master says.”

“He ain’t no master of mine,” said Nancy, fiercely, “nor you ain’t my mistress, Lord be praised. You mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine. It’s fine to be John Brownlow, with all his grandeur; but pride goes before a fall, is what I says,” the old woman muttered, as she went back to Mrs. Fennell’s room. She had said so at Brownlows, looking at the avenue which led to the great house, and at the cozy little lodge out of which she had already planned to turn old Betty. That vision rose before her at this trying moment, and comforted her a little. On the one side the comfortable lodge, and an easy life, and the prospect of unbounded tyranny over a new possessor, who should owe every thing to her; but, on the other side, dismissal from her present post, which was not unprofitable, an end of her good wages and all her consolations. Nancy drew her breath hard at the contrast; the risk seemed to her as great almost as the hope.

Mr. Brownlow left the door composed and serious, as a man does who has just been in the presence of severe perhaps fatal illness, and he went to Dr. Bayley, and told that gentleman that his mother-in-law’s brain was, he feared, giving way, and begged him to see her immediately; and then he went to the office, grave and silent, without a touch of apparent excitement. When he got there, he stopped in the outer office, and called Powys into his own room. “We have not seen you at Brownlows for a long time,” he said. “Jack has some young fellows with him shooting. You had better take a week’s holiday, and come up with me to-night. I shall make it all right with Wrinkell. You can go home and get your bag before the dog-cart comes.”

He said this quickly, without any pause for consideration, as if he had been giving instructions about some deed drawing out; and it was some time before Powys realized the prospect of paradise thus opening before him. “I, sir—do you mean me?” he cried, in his amazement. “To-night?” And Mr. Brownlow appeared to his clerk as if he had been an angel from heaven.

“Yes,” he said, with a smile, “to-night. I suppose you can do it? You do not want much preparation for pleasure at your age.”

Then poor Powys suddenly turned very pale. Out of the first glow of delight he sank into despondency. “I don’t know, sir—if you may have forgotten—what I once said to you—about—about my folly,” faltered the young man, not daring to look into his employer’s face.

“About—?” said Mr. Brownlow; and then he made as though he suddenly recollected, and laughed. “Oh, yes, I remember,” he said. “I suppose all young men are fools sometimes in that respect. But I don’t see it is any business of mine. You can settle it between you. Be ready for me at six o’clock.”

And thus it was all arranged. Powys went out to get his things, not knowing whether he walked or flew, in such a sudden amaze of delight as few men ever experience; and when he was gone Mr. Brownlow put down his ashy face into his clasped hands. Heaven! had it come to this? At the last moment, when the shore was so near, the tempest well-nigh spent, deliverance at hand, was there no resource but this, no escape? All his precautions vain, his wiles, his struggle of conscience! His face was like that of a dead man as he sat by himself and realized what had happened. Why could not he fly to the end of earth, and escape the Nemesis? Was there nothing for it but, like that other wretched father, to sacrifice his spotless child?