“Hush!” he said to the girl, who still pleaded with him in a low clamour of words.
Darda fell silent; but she looked round on Miss Royston with lowered brows and her white teeth set doggedly.
“Rabbit it!” cried the little baronet in perturbation. “I’m foundered, Angel. What shall I do?”
“We are going for a ride, are we not?”
“Yes. But lookee here. The girl says Tuke accuses her brother of some villainy, and hath shut him up in the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“He can do as he likes with his own, I presume.”
Darda broke into a mad outcry.
“Shame on you!” she screamed—“that can lock your woman’s breast from pity with a key of gold! He’s poor and friendless, or such as you would never dare to speak so!”
“Silence, girl!” said Sir David sternly; but his sister had flushed up a very stormy red.
“The fellow hath no more than his deserts, I’ll warrant,” she said loudly. “It must be ill managing a craven and an idiot.”