Captain Lake did look in at the Lodge in the morning, and remained an
hour in conference with Mr. Jos. Larkin. I suppose everything went off
pleasantly. For although Stanley Lake looked very pale and vicious as he
walked down to the iron gate of the Lodge among the evergreens and
bass-mats, the good attorney's countenance shone with a serene and
heavenly light, so pure and bright, indeed, that I almost wonder his
dazzled servants, sitting along the wall while he read and expounded that
morning, did not respectfully petition that a veil, after the manner of
Moses, might be suspended over the seraphic effulgence.

Somehow his 'Times' did not interest him at breakfast; these
parliamentary wrangles, commercial speculations, and foreign disputes,
are they not, after all, but melancholy and dreary records of the merest
worldliness; and are there not moments when they become almost insipid?
Jos. Larkin tossed the paper upon the sofa. French politics, relations
with Russia, commercial treaties, party combinations, how men _can_ so
wrap themselves up in these things!

And he smiled ineffable pity over the crumpled newspaper--on the poor
souls in that sort of worldly limbo. In which frame of mind he took from
his coat pocket a copy of Captain Lake's marriage settlement, and read
over again a covenant on the captain's part that, with respect to this
particular estate of Five Oaks, he would do no act, and execute no
agreement, deed, or other instrument whatsoever, in any wise affecting
the same, without the consent in writing of the said Dorcas Brandon; and
a second covenant binding him and the trustees of the settlement against
executing any deed, &c., without a similar consent; and especially
directing, that in the event of alienating the estate, the said Dorcas
must be made an assenting party to the deed.