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 naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes.