"Oh! my dear girl, is it you at last?" cries Lady Baltimore, running out into the hall as Joyce enters it. "We have been so frightened! Such a storm, and Baltimore says that mare you had is very uncertain. Where did you get shelter?"
The very warmth and kindliness of her welcome, the utter absence of disapproval in it of any sort, so unnerves Joyce that she can make no reply; can only cling to her kindly hostess, and hide her face on her shoulder.
"Is that you, Mrs. Connolly?" says Lady Baltimore, smiling at mine hostess of the Baltimore Arms, over the girl's shoulder.
"Yes, my lady," with a curtsey so low that one wonders how she ever comes up again. "I made so bould, my lady, as to bring ye home Miss Joyce myself. I know Misther Beauclerk to be a good support in himself, but I thought it would be a raisonable thing to give her the company of one of her own women folk besides."
"Quite right. Quite," says Lady Baltimore.
"Oh! she has been so kind to me," says Joyce, raising now a pale face to turn a glance of gratitude on Mrs. Connolly.
"Why, indeed, my lady, I wish I might ha' bin able to do more for her; an' I'm sorry to say I'd to put her up in a small, most inconvenient room, just inside o' me own."
"How was that?" asks Lady Baltimore, kindly. "The inn so full then?"
"Fegs 'twas that was the matther wid it," says Mrs. Connolly, with a beaming smile. "Crammed from cellar to garret."