“Shall I ever do you credit and repay your goodness? I only want to belong to you and not make people stare or call me a knowing jade that has captured her gentleman. Let me live apart and not come to table again, and I’ll strive and strive to pick up the grand ways and read a book of fashion.”
“What! and cease to be yourself that I love? Girl we will eschew the conventions, and entertain no company but that of kennels and hutches and beehives. I would rather know the nightingales in my wood than fifty birds of paradise in turbans round my table.”
They started apart as a knock came to the door.
Bidden to enter, one of the grooms, pale, eager, and excited, stepped hurriedly down into the room, his gun over his arm.
“Sir,” he said, “a man is come from the snow and is knocking at the door for admittance.”
CHAPTER LI.
“A man? What man?” said Tuke.
“George, sir, looking from above, cries that ’tis him with the white hair.”
“Come with me and have your gun in readiness.”
Betty ran forward with clasped hands.