Mrs. Ryder made an agitated motion with her hand, and gave the girl such a look withal, that she retired precipitately.
But Mrs. Gaunt had caught the words, and they literally transformed her. She sprang off the bed, and stood erect, and looked a Saxon Pythoness: golden hair streaming down her back and grey eyes gleaming with fury.
She caught up a little ivory-handled knife, and held it above her head.
"I'll drive this into his heart before them all," she cried," and tell them the reason afterwards!"
Ryder looked at her for a moment in utter terror. She saw a woman with grander passions than herself: a woman that looked quite capable of executing her sanguinary threat. Ryder made no more ado, but slipped out directly to prevent a meeting that might be attended with such terrible consequences.
She found her master in the kitchen, splashed with mud, drinking a horn of ale after his ride, and looking rather troubled and anxious; and, by the keen eye of her sex, she saw that the female servants were also in considerable anxiety. The fact is they had just extemporized a lie.
Tom Leicester being near the kitchen window, had seen Griffith ride into the court-yard.
At sight of that well-known figure, he drew back, and his heart quaked at his own imprudence, in confiding Griffith's secret to Caroline Ryder.
"Lasses," said he, hastily, "do me a kindness for old acquaintance. Here's the Squire. For heaven's sake don't let him know I am in the house, or there will be bloodshed between us; he is a hasty man, and I'm another. I'll tell ye more by and by."
The next moment Griffith's tread was heard approaching the very door, and Leicester darted into the housekeeper's room, and hid in a cupboard there.