'Oh, dear no--quite as usual--he expects to be here soon; but that is all. I so wish I had brought his note with me; but I'm positive that is all.' So, this little matter settled, the lawyer took his leave. CHAPTER XLIII. AN EVIL EYE LOOKS ON THE VICAR. There were influences of a wholly unsuspected kind already gathering round the poor vicar, William Wylder; as worlds first begin in thinnest vapour, and whirl themselves in time into consistency and form, so do these dark machinations, which at times gather round unsuspecting mortals as points of revolution, begin nebulously and intangibly, and grow in volume and in density, till a colossal system, with its inexorable tendencies and forces, crushes into eternal darkness the centre it has enveloped. Thou shalt not covet; thou shalt not cast an eye of desire; out of the heart proceed _murders_;--these dreadful realities shape themselves from so filmy a medium as thought! Ever since his conference with the vicar, good Mr. Larkin had been dimly thinking of a thing. The good attorney's weakness was money. It was a speck at first; a metaphysical microscope of no conceivable power could have developed its exact shape and colour--a mere speck, floating, as it were, in a transparent kyst, in his soul--a mere germ--by-and-by to be an impish embryo, and ripe for action. When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. The vicar's troubles grew and gathered, as such troubles will; and the attorney gave him his advice; and the business of the Rev. William Wylder gradually came to occupy a good deal of his time. Here was a new reason for wishing to know really how Mark Wylder stood. William had undoubtedly the reversion of the estate; but the attorney suspected sometimes--just from a faint phrase which had once escaped Stanley Lake--as the likeliest solution, that Mark Wylder had made a left-handed marriage somehow and somewhere, and that a subterranean wife and family would emerge at an unlucky moment, and squat upon that remainder, and defy the world to disturb them. This gave to his plans and dealings in relation to the vicar a character of irresolution and caprice foreign to his character, which was grim and decided enough when his data were clear, and his object in sight. William Wylder, meanwhile, was troubled, and his mind clouded by more sorrows than one.