Jesuitical. He saw that it
would be useless to exhort these two persons to ignore the terrible
things that had happened, and to make it up as if it was only a
squabble. What he did was to repeat to the husband every gracious word
the wife let fall, and _vice versa_, and to suppress all either said
that might tend to estrange them.

In short, he acted the part of Mr. Harmony in the play, and acted it to
perfection.

_Gutta cavat lapidem._

Though no perceptible effect followed his efforts, yet there is no doubt
that he got rid of some of the bitterness. But the coldness remained.

One day he was sent for all in a hurry by Griffith.

He found him looking gloomy and agitated.

The cause came out directly. Griffith had observed, at last, what all
the females in the house had seen two months ago, that Mrs. Gaunt was in
the family way.

He now communicated this to Father Francis, with a voice of agony, and
looks to match.

"All the better, my son," said the genial priest: "'twill be another tie
between you. I hope it will be a fine boy to inherit your estates."
Then, observing a certain hideous expression distorting Griffith's face,
he fixed his eyes full on him, and said, sternly, "Are you not cured yet
of that madness of yours?"

"No, no, no," said Griffith, deprecatingly; "but why did she not tell
me?"

"You had better ask her."

"Not I. She will remind me I am nothing to her now. And, though 'tis so,
yet I would not hear it from her lips."

In spite of this wise resolution, the torture he was in drove him to
remonstrate with her on her silence.

She blushed high, and excused herself as follows:--

"I should have told you as soon as I knew it myself. But you were not
with me. I was all by myself--in Carlisle jail."

This reply, uttered with hypocritical meekness, went through Griffith
like a knife. He turned white, and gasped for breath, but said nothing.
He left her, with a deep groan, and never ventured to mention the matter
again.

All he did in that direction was to redouble his attentions and
solicitude for her health.

The relation between these two was now more anomalous than ever.

Even Father Francis, who had seen strange things in families, used to
watch Mrs. Gaunt rise from the table and walk heavily to the door, and
her husband dart to it and open it obsequiously, and receive only a very
formal reverence in return,--and wonder how all this was to end.

However, under this icy surface,