‘One could hardly expect it could be otherwise. A few days’ rest will restore her, I trust. Believe me, Martin, no one could be more anxious about her than I.’
‘And now answer me a question. Did you ever hear the name of Tomlin?’
‘Yes, there is a solicitor of that name at Seacomb.’
‘No, middle-aged, at most. I should think him barely forty.’
‘Then he is not the man I want. He had a father before him, I suppose?’
‘Yes, old Mr. Tomlin was a wonderful fellow, I believe, universally respected. I never saw him to my knowledge, for he died when I was a youngster, but I have often heard my father talk of him.’
Half an hour afterwards, when they were seated at the farmer’s early dinner, Maurice took occasion to question Michael Trevanard on the same subject.
‘Old Mr. Tomlin?’ said the farmer. ‘Yes, I remember him well, though he never did any business for me. A very worthy man, everybody liked him; a lawyer in a thousand, a thoroughly honest man. He died suddenly, poor fellow. Left his house one morning in excellent health to attend the petty sessions, and was seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the court and never spoke again. His funeral was one of the grandest I ever saw in Seacomb.’
‘Do you happen to remember the year of his death?’
‘Yes, I remember it well, for it occurred in the winter, before Muriel’s long illness. He died in December, 1847. This explained Muriel’s conduct. Death had snatched away the one friend to whom she could have made her appeal.’
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII ‘IT IS TIME, O PASSIONATE HEART,’ SAID I.
The reason of Muriel’s conduct was fully explained by the fact of Mr. Tomlin’s death. The one friend whom her husband’s forethought had provided for her had been snatched away before the hour of her need, and she had found herself alone, without help, counsel, or shelter. Doubtless an overstrained respect for her promise—perhaps a latent fear of Bridget Trevanard’s severe nature—had withheld her from revealing the fact of her marriage and the manner of it. She had borne the deep agony of shame rather than endanger her husband’s future. She had perhaps argued that if her mother and father had been told the truth, nothing would have prevented their communicating it to the Squire, and then George would have been disinherited through her broken promise. Woman-like, she had deemed her own peace—her own fair fame even—a lighter sacrifice than her husband’s welfare, and she had kept silence.