"No," she answered, "the baron stays on till Thursday. He was closeted an hour this morning with Edwards--Oh, that man! he is too incorrigible; he has told Lady Truscott not to be overwhelmed, since the miracle has some explanation--puts it all down to hypnotism--I must go." On this she ran on up, and left me.
Below I was at once struck by a difference in the tone of the house. I did not see Mr Edwards, and Baron Kolár too was missing. Langler told me that the baron was at Ritching Vicarage with Dr Burton, and when I mentioned to him what Mrs Edwards had whispered me as to Burton's probable rise, his answer was: "well, that will be only fitting: moreover, Baron Kolár prophesied it, you remember."
The afternoon passed into twilight, and still I saw no sign of the Styrian, but an hour before dinner, as I happened to be strolling alone in one of the home-coverts separated by a path from the park, Mr Edwards, without any hat, broke through the bushes, dashing back his hair, and looking pestered. "Oh, Mr Templeton," he said, "have you seen anything of Baron Kolár?"
"Hang the man," said he, "I have had four men out on his trail for an hour...."
I said that I had understood earlier in the day that the baron was at Dr Burton's.
"He was," answered Edwards, "but he isn't now. It is precisely about Dr Burton that I want to see him, for the Bishop of Lincoln offers Burton the nomination to the vacant Chancellorship and Residentiary Canonry, on condition that I accept at once. Properly speaking, you know, the whole job lies miles outside my interest, and I only wish----God forgive me."
"Well," he answered, "the country, of course, looks to me now to rush Dr Burton into some Grand Lamaship--as though one could at a moment's notice like this! I assure you, Mr Templeton, soft isn't the word for the hundreds of unpractical suggestions that have been made me this day by leading men in the country, so what we are coming to from a business point of view is rather hard to say. Oxford is a place up in the clouds! and Cambridge isn't far below.... I don't seem to have even a spare deanery into which to fit Burton, and the whole to-do is rather hard on me--all extraneous work and worry--for _I_ haven't studied Church-organisation! if anyone were to ask me who is the real head of it all as things are, the King or the Pope, I believe I'd be put to it to give him a straight answer. However, there's this Lincoln Chancellorship, and I'm hunting down Baron Kolár to see whether or not he'll have it for Dr Burton just for the time being...."