‘I beg your pardon,’ muttered Jerome. ‘It is not my habit to speak in that manner; but I have been harassed almost to madness by the embarrassments and difficulties of my position. Sometimes I have wondered whether the last Wellfield was sent into the world to make a name and a fortune on the stage.’ ‘I can well understand your feelings. Where are you staying?’ he added, suddenly. ‘At an inn? Will you not come and take shelter with us at Brentwood. They would be——’ ‘I thank you. I am staying at the Abbey.’ ‘Ah, at the Abbey? Then you simply came down here for a stroll. Will they turn you out of the Abbey as a polluted thing if you enter Brentwood to take a meal there?’ ‘I don’t suppose they would; but at this moment I am waiting, and must continue to wait until she comes, for Miss Bolton, who has been kind enough to promise me her assistance in deciding what part of the lumber inside here is fit to keep and which is good only to be cast into the fire.’ ‘You know Miss Bolton, then?’ ‘I made her acquaintance, and that of her father, yesterday; and they asked me to stay with them until my business here was done.’ ‘Her father is enormously rich.’ ‘Is he? I knew he must be rich from the sum he paid my father for the Abbey. I did not know his wealth was “enormous.”’ ‘But it is, without any exaggeration. He has been one of the most successful manufacturers in Burnham, and does an immense foreign trade: perhaps your knowledge of foreign languages might be useful to him. Knowledge _is_ power, you know, let fools say what they may against it,’ observed Father Somerville, who had a way of throwing out hints which suggested the largest possibilities, in a casual careless way which was quite peculiar to him. ‘It is no small thing to be one of the wealthiest manufacturers of Burnham,’ he went on. ‘In plain English, it means an income like that of a nobleman—an income which in this case is not one quarter spent, but which goes on accumulating in excellent investments.... And Miss Bolton is sole heiress?’ ‘Yes—so I understand,’ said Jerome, absently, his mind occupied with the priest’s suggestion that perhaps his knowledge of languages might prove useful to Mr. Bolton. Why not? It would be well for him if it should turn out to be so. The natural indolence of his half-southern temperament made the idea of strenuous exertion in search of employment, which hardly could in the nature of things be remunerative, utterly abhorrent to him; and he grasped with the more eagerness at the idea suggested by Somerville’s words.