Well, Burrel, as he sat down to breakfast, had just come to one of those slow spaces in the current of existence, where he felt that some bank, or stone, or molehill, must turn the stream; and, as I have before said, his first thought was, What was to happen next?
Oh, that curious question, which has puzzled the wisest from the beginning of the world, and will puzzle them still, till the last day solves it forever!--What is to happen next?
It had scarcely passed through Burrel's brain, when the door opened, and Sir Sidney Delaware was announced. He entered the room slowly, as was his custom; but, as he did enter, Burrel at once perceived that a certain air of coldness--which, like the Mithridate of the ancients, defied all analysis, from the multitude of ingredients that composed it--was altogether gone, and in its room there was a frank, bland smile, as he greeted him, which unloaded the baronet's brow of the wrinkles of full ten years.
"I have come to visit you, Mr. Burrel," said Sir Sidney Delaware, "at an unusual hour, solely because I wished to see you; and, if you will give me leave, I will take my coffee with you." Burrel rang the bell, and the necessary additions to his breakfast-table were soon completed, while he expressed politely, but neither coldly nor cordially, his pleasure at the visit of Sir Sidney Delaware.
"My first task, Mr. Burrel," said the baronet, mildly and kindly, "is to express my gratitude for the salvation of my dear child; and allow me to say, that no one who does not love her as I do, can feel what that gratitude is."
When a poor man and a proud man condescends to pour forth his feelings to his equal in mind and station, and his superior in more worldly wealth, it is a compliment which deserves instant return, and Burrel--though he had been unwilling to risk for a moment a fresh advance, to be again repulsed--felt, from the whole tone and manner of his companion, that the barrier was broken down between them. To have held back would have been an insult, and he instantly replied, not in the set form which means no more than a copy-line to a schoolboy, but in those words and accents that conveyed fully to Sir Sidney Delaware, that he had felt a real and personal pleasure in serving his daughter in the manner that he had done. He spoke frankly, though guardedly, of the charms and graces of Miss Delaware's conversation and demeanor--he spoke more boldly and feelingly of the impression that the blending of sailor-like candor with gentlemanly feeling, in Captain Delaware, had produced upon his mind--and although Burrel alluded to these things in the tone of a man of the world, who had found out a treasure in pure nature that he had never before discovered, he did so without the slightest assumption of superiority; and both his words and his manner expressed alone unfeigned pleasure in the acquaintance he had made, and the service he had rendered.