CHAPTER III.
“LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST.”
“‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said;
‘Oh, changed in little space!’”
“When Pity could no longer look on Pain.”
“Faith, I don’t know anny more than yourself, miss. ’Twas twelve o’clock last night when he come home, and Tom says the mare was in such a sweat when he brought her in that he thought she’d never stop breaking out in the stable.”
“Where has he been all the morning? Did he breakfast long before I did?”
“It wasn’t half-past seven, miss, when he was downstairs calling for a cup of tay from the servants’ breakfast, and, afther he taking it, he went out of the house,” Roche answered, rising stiffly from his knees after he had swept up and replenished the drawing-room grate.
“It is very curious,” I said to myself, going over to the window and looking out on the lawn, where the dogs were engaged in a long, unsatisfactory wrangle over a duck’s claw. “I wonder what has become of him?”
“Miss Theo,” began Roche, impressively, depositing his coal-scuttle in the middle of the floor, “I don’t like the way Masther Willy is, and that’s the thruth. Maggie told me he wasn’t in his bed last night at all; and Tom was saying he had a face on him that would frighten you when he ordhered the horse yesterday.”