Three
strokes of the great bell opened and closed the announcement, and a
great hush of expectancy, not unmingled with fear, fell upon the
place.
There was one in the household, however, who at first objected to
the whole proceeding. That was sir Toby Mathews, the catholic
chaplain. He went to the marquis and represented that, if there was
to be any exercise whatever of unlawful power, the obligations of
the sacred office with which he was invested would not permit him to
be present or connive thereat. The marquis merrily insisted that it
was a case of exorcism; that the devil was in the castle, and out he
must go; that if Satan assisted in the detection of the guilty and
the purging of the innocent, then was he divided against himself,
and what could be better for the church or the world? But for his
own part he had no hand in it, and if sir Toby had anything to say
against it, he must go to his son. This he did at once; but lord
Herbert speedily satisfied him, pledging himself that there should
be nothing done by aid from beneath, and making solemn assertion
that if ever he had employed any of the evil powers to work out his
designs, it had been as their master and not their accomplice.
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