John Stich managed to reach Philip's ear without exciting attention. The young man at once slipped out of the room, in order to tell his sister that a yokel bearing important news would wish to speak with her privately.
Her heart beating with eagerness and apprehension, Patience hurried down the narrow stairs, and in the passage found herself face to face with a man dressed in a long, dingy smock, and whose features she could not distinguish beneath the broad brim of his hat.
He raised a respectful hand to his forelock as soon as he was in her ladyship's presence, but did not remove his hat.
"You wished to speak with me, my man?" asked Lady Patience, eagerly.
"I have a message for to deliver to Lady Patience Gascoyne," said Bathurst, whose voice, hoarse and quavering with fatigue, needed no assumption of disguise. He kept his head well bent, and the passage was very dark.
Patience, with her thoughts fixed on the gallant, upright figure she had last seen so full of vitality and joy in the little inn-parlour upstairs, scarce gave more than a passing glance to the stooping form, leaning heavily on a stick before her.
"Yes, yes," she said impatiently, "you have a message? From whom?"
"I don't rightly know, my lady ... a gentleman 'twas ... on the Heath this morning ... he give me this letter for your ladyship."
Burying his tell-tale, slender hand well inside the capacious sleeve of Jock Miggs's smock, Bathurst handed Patience a note written by himself. She took it from him with a glad little cry, and when he turned to go she put a restraining hand on his arm.
"Wait till I've read the letter," she said, "I may wish to send an answer."