She showed him into a queer little parlour, with a long latticed window that looked into a vegetable garden ruddy with apple-trees, and fetched cloth and salt from a corner cupboard, while he sat down by an old grumbling grandfather clock and watched her movements.
“Who is the landlord of this good tavern?” said he.
“George Pollack, sir; and I am his granddaughter, at your service.”
“Would you were. And what is your name, my pretty maid?”
“Elizabeth, I was christened,” said she; “and Betty am I called.”
His last words suggesting an old nursery rhyme—“And what is your fortune, my pretty maid?” he could not help murmuring.
“Self-possession,” said she with a smile, and whisked out of the room.
CHAPTER V.
Mr. Tuke had ridden a mile along the last lap of his journey, when he suddenly drew himself together, gave a whistle, and set to communing audibly with his inner man.
“This will not do, Roberto,” he murmured. “Thou hast eaten of the dangerous fruit, and the sweet poison courses in thy veins.”