Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

22 RAVENSHOE.
ance of Mrs. Ravenshoe the second, who, as we have seen, treated
him with such ill-disguised contempt that he was anything but
comfortable, and was even meditating a retreat to Rome, when
the conversation he overheard in the drawing-room made him
pause, and the birth of the boy Cuthbert confirmed his resolution
to stay.
For now, indeed, there was a prospect open to him. Here was
this child delivered over to him like clay to a potter, that he
might form it as he would. It should go hard but that the revenues and county influence of the Ravenshoes should tend to the
glory of the Church, as heretofore. Only one person was in his
way, and that was Mrs. Ravenshoe; after her death, he was
master of the situation with regard to the eldest of the boys. He
had partly guessed, ever since he overheard the conversation of
Densil and his wife, that some sort of bargain existed between
them about the second child; but he paid little heed to it. It
was, therefore, with the bitterest anger that he saw his fears confirmed, and I)ensil angrily obstinate on the matter; for, supposing
Cuthbert were to die, all his trouble and anxiety would avail
nothing, and the old house and lands would fall to a Protestant
heir, the first time in the history of the island. Father Clifford
consoled him.
Meanwhile, his behavior towards Densil was gradually and
insensibly altered. He became the free-and-easy man of the
world, the amusing companion, the wise counsellor. He saw
that Densil was of a nature to lean on some one, and he was
determined it should be on him; so he made himself necessary.
But he did more than this; he determined he would be beloved
as well as respected, and with a happy audacity he set to work to
win that poor, wild, foolish heart to himself, using such arts of
pleasing as must have been furnished by his own mother wit, and
could never have been learned in a hundred years from a Jesuit
college. The poor heart was not a hard one to win; and the
day they buried poor Father Clifford in the mausoleum, it was
with a mixture of pride at his own talents, and contemptuous
pity for his dupe, that Mackworth listened to Densil as he told
him that he was now his only friend, and besought him not to
leave him, - which thing Mackworth promised, with the deepest
sincerity, he would not do.