Colonel Dacre waited to hear no more. He was quite satisfied now that the young person in the Shetland veil was some lady’s-maid, who had learned to copy her mistress successfully enough to deceive an outsider, until she opened her mouth. Then there could be no doubt about her social status whatever; and it quite amused him to picture Lady Teignmouth’s horror, supposing she had been told that he had taken a third-class passenger, with a northern burr, for her aristocratic self.
The rest of the journey passed without further incident.
On getting down at Westhampton, Colonel Dacre found himself looking out rather curiously for the heroine of his little adventure at Preston; but she was not there, nor in the third-class carriage where he had seen her last, so that either she had changed her seat, or had got down at one of the intermediate stations.
“Anyhow, it doesn’t matter to me,” he said to himself. “I have had abundant proof that it is not Lady Teignmouth, and that was all I wanted to know.”
There was one rickety fly waiting outside the station, and Colonel Dacre engaged it at once, and told the man to drive direct to Turoy Grange. It was only four miles off, but the roads were so bad, the country so hilly, and the poor horse so groggy, that it was an hour and a half before they came in sight of Turoy, a little cluster of cottages, with a small, gray church tower rising out of their midst.
Another steep ascent brought them into the village; they stopped in front of a low, old-fashioned house.
“This is the Grange, zurr,” said the coachman; and Colonel Dacre jumped out gladly.
Then he rang the bell, and as he heard it echo through the silent house, a sudden nervous fear seized him lest he should have done ill in coming.
Lady Gwendolyn was so peculiar that the thing which would have helped him with another woman might ruin him with her. Nobody answered his first summons, nor his second; but when he rang a third time he heard a step along the hall, and the door opened at last—slowly and reluctantly.
A respectable-looking middle-aged woman presented herself, and evidently regarded Colonel Dacre with great disfavor.