He was turning to go, when he was aware of the girl standing, with frightened eyes, in the shadow of the hearth.
“Before God, sweetheart,” he cried, “I commit you to rare company! This is the hound, Betty, that wrought you a cur’s vengeance!”
The visitor pursed his lips and shut his eyes and shook his head in some patient dissent.
“You will not let me plead,” he murmured. “It is safe to slander the dumb.”
“Give me your piece, William, and go summon Sir David and Whimple hither. I will not let him out of my sight.”
The groom obeyed and hurried off. The moment he was vanished Betty came like a tassel-gentle to her master’s call.
“He is an old man,” she said. “He should have had pity for white hairs. Why were you so cruel to my grandfather, sir?”
“Young lady,” said Fern sorrowfully—“whoever it was worked you that wicked wrong—and I confess I have my suspicions—hath unwittingly, it seems, provided it a golden sequel. Like the beautiful phœnix, which you may have read of, you renew yourself in the ashes of your own destruction, and you shall wear fine feathers yet in a triumph over misfortune.”
“Don’t answer him, Betty,” said her master; “and go up-stairs, wench. I’ll not have you breathe in the same room with him.”
The girl went to the door, looked back wistfully, and obeyed, at the moment that the groom, followed by the two he had been dispatched for, entered the dining-hall.