“More than willing, my dear boy! more than satisfied; you shall have a clear field, that’s certain.  I sha’n’t do any thing—­sha’n’t say a word, meanwhile; shall wait with perfect confidence till you’re ready to report, whenever and however you please.”

“I should like to make you a present on my wedding-day, in return for the parish, you know.  Will that be soon enough?” and the young man met the elder’s eye with a sharp look of significance.

“No more fitting time, no more fitting time,” replied Professor Valeyon.  The old gentleman’s heart was full; he shifted the reins to his right hand, and laid his left upon Bressant’s, which he pressed with much feeling.  Perhaps it was of bad omen thus to seal a bargain with the left hand, but no misgivings of the sort troubled the professor.  He felt more at ease than at any time since his pupil first sprang up the steps of the Parsonage-porch.

But Bressant, if he were a child in the world of the affections, was, in other respects, a man of exceptional shrewdness and comprehensive ability.  Although he had never as yet turned his attention to business matters, he had every faculty and instinct required to make a successful business-man.  When he found his own interests deeply at stake, he may have had more than one motive for wishing to secure to himself a clear field.  But Professor Valeyon was still as simple-hearted a soul—­as quick to trust wherever his sympathies dictated—­as ever in his younger days.

Bressant did not intend to deceive him, but then he had no irrevocably settled plans.  He was not one of those who follow blindfold the promptings of any principle, simply because it chances to be a lofty one.  Although passionate, and hot of blood, he could believe that the greatest good might be made not inconsistent with the greatest comfort.  He undoubtedly intended to do what honor, generosity, and his future father-in-law, urged him to do; but it was less from an abstract love of virtue, than from an overmastering unwillingness to give up Sophie (his affection for whom was the most deeply-seated necessity of his nature—­a fact which must be borne in mind through all that follows), and also—­this was likewise a consideration of the greatest weight; indeed, Sophie alone counted for more—­also, from a very confident conviction that, after every thing had been accomplished, according to the highest dictates of truth, and justice, and all that—­he would not, to all intents and purposes, lose his fortune after all; that, whatever might be the legal disposition of it, all the enjoyments and benefits that it could confer would still be his, with the additional grace of having acted in a most lofty and self-sacrificing spirit; that, in short, and to use a homely illustration, he would be able to give away his cake and eat it too.