Lottie was not to have even a breathing-space of relief. Not five minutes after the departure of Mr. Eardley, the baronet’s carriage drove up to the door of the cobbler’s shop, with Isa and her cousin within. Its approach was announced to Lottie by her brother’s exclamation, “Here comes your mistress a-looking arter ye now!”
“I think all this will drive me mad!” cried Lottie, pressing both her hands to her burning temples.
Isa had been much surprised, and even alarmed, on being informed by Hannah at an early hour that morning that “that there girl Lottie” had “run away without saying a word to nobody; taken her bundle, and gone clean off.” Isa could in no way account for the sudden departure of her young servant, except by imagining that she had taken offence at something, and that perhaps something wild and gipsy-like in her nature corresponded with her somewhat gipsy-like appearance.
“To go without saying a word to me, kind and indulgent as I ever have been, seems so strange, so ungrateful,” observed Isa to her brother, when she mentioned to him at breakfast a fact of which he had had much earlier notice than herself.
“No accounting for the vagaries of a raw, untutored village rustic,” observed Gaspar, applying to his snuff-box; and he was ungenerous enough to add, in order to cover his own confusion, “You had better count up the spoons.”
“I could answer for Lottie’s honesty,” said Isa.
So could Gaspar Gritton, for he had seen it put to the proof; he had seen the “raw, untutored village rustic” withstand a temptation under which he, an educated man, calling himself a gentleman, had basely succumbed. But Gaspar felt himself placed in a position of difficulty. He would probably have at once told his sister all the circumstances connected with Lottie’s dismissal, had it not been for Isa’s having spoken to him on the subject of the Orissa. Gaspar shrank from avowing to one who, as he knew, suspected his honesty, that he actually had a large sum of money concealed in a vault.
“What could have induced the girl to take such a step?” said Isa, following the current of her own thoughts. “Hannah is as much in the dark as ourselves.”
“Really,” observed Gaspar peevishly, “the subject is not worth the trouble of considering. Such an insignificant cipher may go, or stay, or hang herself; it matters not the turn of a straw to us.”