Whether in old Peggy, inglorious, though not mute, there rested the soul of a romance writer, or whether, as she herself averred, the Outhwaites knew a deal, she told “Miss Flowra,” as she called Florella, more about “t’ owd Guy” than any one had ever heard before. She was a true reciter; and while Florella sketched, she would stand before her, and describe the passage of the Flete on that awful night when Waynflete was lost, as if she herself had been standing by. She told her the original legend of the traitor who had betrayed his friend’s life, and therefore had “walked” ever since. She mentioned his appearances, and talked about him with a kind of grotesque familiarity as if “t’ owd gen’leman” had been in the habit of taking constitutionals about the valley. But now and then her tone deepened.
“Eh, my dear,” she said, “ye mun look on’t aright. A poor lost soul does na’ coom back to tempt, but to warn—to warn us fra’ sin, Missy. He’s boun’ to coom, though happen the devil drives ’un. But ’tisna a’ can see. T’ owd Guy may walk oop till most on us, and we be noon wiser. There’s my Jem, puir lad, sees ’un, he do, and Mr Guy, he knaws ’un well.”
“Did he ever tell you so?” said Florella.
“Eh, d’ye think I need tellin’? Eh, there a be. Good day to ye, sir.”
Florella’s palette fell out of her hand before this friendly greeting revealed to her that it was not the old, but the young Guy, who stood at the garden gate.
He had not been at Waynflete since his return, and now came forward with outstretched hand, while Jem appeared behind him like his shadow.
“Godfrey has been away,” he said, “and I couldn’t get over before. I have come to the Vicarage for a week. There are a good many arrangements to make, and I want to ask Mrs John Palmer a favour. I should like—it’s an odd fancy—but I should like old Miss Maxwell, the Stauntons’ cousin, to come to the church opening. You saw her, I think. I know Mrs Palmer is going kindly to do the entertaining.”
“Oh yes,” said Florella. “I had thought of her. But she’d like you to ask her yourself.”
“So I know,” he said; “I shall ride over. Staunton says he won’t come in the character of an hereditary foe; but I shall get him somehow.”
“We asked Violet,” said Florella, “and she says that ancestors are such a novelty that she is delighted to have even a villain.”