The Lady Idonia sat in a large carved chair near the fire. Lord Marnell, who had only just entered, and had had a day's hard riding, had thrown himself on a settle near, with the air of a tired man who was glad to come back to home comforts.
The settle itself would have been hard comfort, but a well-to-do house in those days never ran short of cushions, and his Lordship lay on half a dozen. The Lady Margery was flitting about the table, looking to the ways of her household, and Dorathie was extremely busy on a strip of tapestry. The baked eels were just coming in at the door, when the clear notes of a horn rang outside the gate. It was accompanied—as that sound always was—by a nervous start from Idonia.
Dorathie never could understand why her grandmother always seemed alarmed when a horn sounded. She was too young to be told that before she was born, two horns had so sounded, one of which had brought to Idonia the news of her widowhood, and the other had heralded the arrival of persecutors for the faith. For the momentary defection on her part which followed the latter, Idonia's pardon might be registered in Heaven, but she had never forgiven herself. Was it any wonder if the sound of a horn brought back to her shrinking heart both those awful memories?
"Guests, I ween!" said Lord Marnell, not altering his position on the settle, where he lay with both arms thrown back and beneath his head.
"Dear heart, who shall they be, trow?" responded his wife.
The slip of tapestry dropped from the fingers of Dorathie, who had rushed to the door, and was peering through the crack to make such discoveries as she could.
"Doll! Dorathie! Doll, I say!" cried the scandalised Lady Marnell to her curiosity-stricken heiress. "Come back this minute! Where be thy manners?"
Dorathie's obedience, rather than her manners, produced a reluctant retreat from the door. The gate was heard to open and shut, the clatter of horses came into the paved court-yard, there was the sound of a little bustle and several voices without, and then through the door one voice that all recognised with exclamations of pleasure, the rather because it was one of the last which they expected to hear.
"Agnes, sweet heart!"
"Annis, my dear maid!"