These explanations were more probable than what had flashed across Oliver’s mind, and caused him to contort his figure by one of his old excited, awkward movements, in a revulsion from a crying case of heartless selfishness. He had thought for an instant, could the Amyotts possibly have guessed the half-resolution which he was only turning over in his own mind, to let or even sell the mill and mill-house, and quit the neighbourhood, where there seemed nothing remaining for him to do, where he had tried his utmost to work out his notions of duty and a career, and had signally failed? Did the Amyotts know, from Friarton gossip, that the Constables’ baking business in the town had diminished to such a fraction that, in justice to himself and his coming creditors, Oliver must give up the premises from which the business had departed? Were his nearest neighbours seizing the first opportunity, with indecent haste and mean covetousness, to sound him, in the hope of, at the same time, obtaining Naboth’s vineyard and getting rid of Mordecai at their gates? Perhaps Mr. Amyott trusted to an immediate, tempting, and what he might imagine a substantially handsome offer of purchase, at a fancy price, to induce a man, impoverished and embarrassed by his crotchets, to sell his birthright, and so to secure to the owners of Copley Grange what one of them had long craved. If that were so, a man might well pray to be delivered from the mania for high art, prevailing to the extinction of common feeling. For was not the dainty bride, in her refinement of bridal finery—sobered down still further by the necessity of wearing a black gown, in memory of her brother’s late lowborn wife, keenly desirous, under her pretence of mourning, to cut away the last link between her and the Constables? And all the while she might have guessed, if she had cared to use her woman’s wit, how much of old Peter Constable’s honestly and laboriously earned money had gone to fill up the gaps left by Mrs. Amyott’s brother’s reckless improvidence. It was only for a moment that Oliver indulged the suspicion. He saw almost immediately that the Amyotts were as much taken by surprise, and more put out, than he was, though they recovered themselves with the comparative celerity and ease of well-bred people, who were, by their nurture and position, master and mistress of social situations, and equal to any social difficulty.