CHAPTER XX.
ON THE BRINK.
For four more days, Richard Yorke continued at the _Gethin Castle_--to outward appearance, in the same relation with the landlord and his family as before, but in reality on a totally different footing.
Trevethick had not found it practicable to exclude his late guest from the bar parlor; he could not do so without entering into an explanation with its other tenants, which he was not prepared for, or without devising some excuse far beyond his powers.

Notwithstanding his bluff ways, he could tell a lie without moving a muscle; but he was incapable of any such ambitious flight of deceit as the present state of affairs demanded.

He had, indeed, no aptitude for social diplomacy of any kind, and suffered his change of feeling toward the young landscape-painter to appear so plainly that even the phlegmatic Solomon observed it.

He was rather pleased than otherwise to do so.

He had acquiesced in the hospitality with which Richard had been treated, but without the slightest sympathy with it; and, in fact, he had no sympathies save those which were connected with his personal interests.