CHAPTER V

'T is true, no lover has that power
To enforce a desperate amour
As he that has two strings to his bow
And burns for love and money too.--BUTLER.


The friar had often had experience of the baron's testy humour;
but it had always before confined itself to words,
in which the habit of testiness often mingled more expression
of displeasure than the internal feeling prompted.
He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at the same time
hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter,
often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact.
The early attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon
had given the baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits
and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover;
and not being over-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say,
not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was
necessary to preserve him from excommunication, confiscation,
and philotheoparoptesism,[1] he was not sorry to encourage
his daughter's choice of her confessor in brother Michael,
who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of his fraternity,
and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the good things
of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior.
The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been
accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio,
which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn
in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore