"It is—it is!" said Jane, shivering, for her superstitious nature had been touched by the strange coincidence. Governed by a stronger will than her own, she knelt, while the tears rained down her face.
But the knocking began to grow desperate.
"You had better go," said Margaret quietly; "our visitor is impatient."
Obedient as a child, the woman who but a few moments before had been foaming with rage got up and went out. The cause of the noise was soon explained. A chaise was standing at the gate, the sound of whose approach had been unheard in the tumult of the night: an elderly woman had dismounted.
"Sae ye're not all deed and buried," she said briskly as the landlady showed her scared face at the gate. "I was rating the laddie here for misguiding o' an auld wife that micht hae bin his mither, for, thinks I to myself, sure and certain there's not a soul within, and a awfu' nicht it is to keep a body outside"—the old woman spoke quite reproachfully—"but noo I think on't," she continued, "ye're not living here your lane. One Mrs. Grey is lodgin' wi' you, for, as I tak it, you're the landleddy."
Jane was scarcely able to speak, but as silence gives consent the old woman proceeded to pay the boy, to gather up her parcels and to walk rapidly along the garden-path.
"An' here is Mrs. Grey her ainsel', as I canna doobt," she continued cheerfully, for Margaret had lighted the hall-lamp and was standing underneath it.
The old Scotchwoman looked round her scrutinizingly as she passed into the lighted hall. There was a certain appearance of repressed excitement about both Margaret and the landlady that did not escape her shrewd old eyes. "Bless me, how wild they look!" was her mental ejaculation, but she refrained from all expression of her feelings.
Mrs. Foster understood her manners. She prided herself on this, that she knew a lady the moment she set her eyes upon her. Whatever Mrs. Grey might turn out to be, old Martha was satisfied at once that she was a lady, and she acted accordingly. She dropped a little old-fashioned curtsey, and the excitement of her first arrival having in a measure passed, brought forward her best English to do honor to the occasion: