Immediately Flick stood at bay, and a scrimmage seemed imminent, when the young man took a short whip from a peg in the hall, and thrashing right and left, with a great many oaths and curses, exclaimed, 'The brutes—the underbred brutes,' as the dogs went whining and yelping back to the place whence they came.
'Now, madam,' the young man said, after apologising for this uproar, 'let me show you into the only habitable room in the place where you can have your desired interview with the Squire.'
He pushed open a door as he spoke, and holding it for Bryda to pass, closed it again, and left her alone.
Bryda was in the old library, which was full of deed boxes and papers. Books lined the walls, and a big chair at the farther end by the bay window was the magistrate's seat, where Mr Bayfield had, after the custom of the time, tried prisoners for poaching, petty larceny, and other offences.
Bryda felt frightened, and yet gathered up all her courage to meet Mr Bayfield when he appeared.
The summer sunshine, lying on the wide expanse of open country, did not touch this gloomy room, which looked full north, and only caught a gleam of brightness later in the day for a short space.
Bryda walked to the window and looked out. Flick was lying on the terrace, his nose on his big ungainly paws, his ears pricked up—on guard, and watching for a return of the yapping crew which the young man's whip had so summarily dismissed.
The aspect of everything was dreary and cheerless. The dark firs, the decayed urns, which flanked either side of the stone steps, the rough terrace of loose stones, the long grass of the pleasance below, where a few flowers were bravely struggling to show themselves under difficulties.
'What a dreary place!' Bryda exclaimed. 'But, oh, I wish the Squire would come. I wish Betty was here; but I must make the best of it now I have come here. No gentleman would be cruel to an old man like grandfather, and—'
She stopped, for the door opened and the same man whom she had met on the road came in. He made a low bow, and advancing, said,—