The plausible serenity of his manner was replaced by unusual gloom, and that abstraction which is produced by deep and absorbing thought.

He seemed so completely wrapped up in constant meditation upon some particular subject, that he absolutely forgot to guard himself against observation or remark, by his usual artifice of manner.

He walked alone in the garden, a thing he was not accustomed to do; and during these walks he would stop and pause, then go on slowly and musingly, and stop and pause again.

Barney, as we have said before, was a keen observer, and having watched him from a remote corner of the garden in which he was temporarily engaged among some flowers, he came at once to the conclusion that Woodward's mind was burdened with something which heavily depressed his spirits, and occupied his whole attention.
"Ah," exclaimed Barney, "the villain is brewing mischief for some one, but I will watch his motions if I should pass sleepless nights for it.
He requires a sharp eye after him, and it will go hard with me or I shall know what his midnight wanderings mean; but in the meantime I must keep calm and quiet, and not seem to watch him." Whilst Barney, who was unseen by Woodward, having been separated from him by a fruit hedge over which he occasionally peeped, indulged in this soliloquy, the latter, in the same deep and moody meditation, extended his walk, his brows contracted, and dark as midnight.
"The damned hag," said he, speaking unconsciously aloud, "is this the affection which she professed to bear me?
Is this the proof she gives of the preference which she often expressed for her favorite son?
To leave her property to that miserable milksop, my half-brother! What devil could have tempted her to this?
Not Lindsay, certainly, for I know he would scorn to exercise any control over her in the disposition of her property, and as for Maria, I know she would not.

It must then have been the milksop himself in some puling fit of pain or illness; and ably must the beggarly knave have managed it when he succeeded in changing the stern and flinty heart of such a she-devil.