The upshot of this conversation was, that in a day or two (during which time Mr. Leigh and Eustace also had made the amende honorable, and matters went smoothly enough) Father Campian asked Father Francis, the household chaplain, to allow him, as an especial favor, to hear Eustace’s usual confession on the ensuing Friday.

Poor Father Francis dared not refuse so great a man; and assented with an inward groan, knowing well that the intent was to worm out some family secrets, whereby his power would be diminished, and the Jesuits’ increased.  For the regular priesthood and the Jesuits throughout England were toward each other in a state of armed neutrality, which wanted but little at any moment to become open war, as it did in James the First’s time, when those meek missionaries, by their gentle moral tortures, literally hunted to death the poor Popish bishop of Hippopotamus (that is to say, London) for the time being.

However, Campian heard Eustace’s confession; and by putting to him such questions as may be easily conceived by those who know anything about the confessional, discovered satisfactorily enough, that he was what Campian would have called “in love:”  though I should question much the propriety of the term as applied to any facts which poor prurient Campian discovered, or indeed knew how to discover, seeing that a swine has no eye for pearls.  But he had found out enough:  he smiled, and set to work next vigorously to discover who the lady might be.

If he had frankly said to Eustace, “I feel for you; and if your desires are reasonable, or lawful, or possible, I will help you with all my heart and soul,” he might have had the young man’s secret heart, and saved himself an hour’s trouble; but, of course, he took instinctively the crooked and suspicious method, expected to find the case the worst possible,—­as a man was bound to do who had been trained to take the lowest possible view of human nature, and to consider the basest motives as the mainspring of all human action,—­and began his moral torture accordingly by a series of delicate questions, which poor Eustace dodged in every possible way, though he knew that the good father was too cunning for him, and that he must give in at last.  Nevertheless, like a rabbit who runs squealing round and round before the weasel, into whose jaws it knows that it must jump at last by force of fascination, he parried and parried, and pretended to be stupid, and surprised, and honorably scrupulous, and even angry; while every question as to her being married or single, Catholic or heretic, English or foreign, brought his tormentor a step nearer the goal.  At last, when Campian, finding the business not such a very bad one, had asked something about her worldly wealth, Eustace saw a door of escape and sprang at it.

“Even if she be a heretic, she is heiress to one of the wealthiest merchants in Devon.”

“Ah!” said Campian, thoughtfully.  “And she is but eighteen, you say?”