‘That’s as you please, Hugh. Mother’s indoors, and always glad to see you, you know that without my telling you, but I’m too busy to have any more time to spare. Good-night.’
She held out her hand to him in token of farewell, and he was fain to accept it and take his leave of her. But, intuitively, he felt more upset than the occasion demanded. He walked on further towards a neighbouring village, and did not return till an hour later. Then he distinguished in the gloaming a white dress cross the road, and go towards the Hall by way of the fields. Hugh felt sure that the dress belonged to Nell, and yet she had told him she should not leave the farm that night. And what should she want up at the Hall, too, just as the family had returned to it, when she never went near Mrs Hody for weeks together when the house was empty. Hugh puzzled over this enigma for a long time without coming to a satisfactory solution, but he turned into Panty-cuckoo Farm just to see if his suspicion was correct. Meanwhile Nell was creeping up to the Hall by a back way to gain an audience of old Mrs Hody while the family was at dinner. She felt she must know the best, or the worst, before she slept that night.
‘Mrs Hody,’ she said, as she burst in upon that worthy, making a comfortable tea off all the tit-bits that came down from her master’s table, ‘mother sent me up to ask you if the gentlemen will take tea or coffee in the morning.’
‘Lor’! my dear, neither I should say. What will they want with troubling your mother about such things. If they’ve been used to it, her ladyship will order me to send it down for them from the Hall. I wonder whatever put such an idea into her head.’
‘Oh, she thought it best to make sure,’ replied the girl, ‘and please, what are their names?’
‘The gentlemen’s names? Why, one is the Honourable Mr Lennox, and the other is a Mr Portland.’
‘Portland?’ exclaimed Nell. ‘Are you sure? Portland?’
‘Yes, my girl, I’m quite sure. Mr John Portland, though I’ve never seen him at the Hall before. He comes from London, I believe. Sir Archibald’s always picking up strangers, and bringing them here to eat their heads off at his expense. Well, some folks have queer notions of pleasure. Haven’t they? Oh, you’re off. Well, give my respects to your mother, and tell her to mind and keep all her spare cream and chickens for the Hall, for I’ll want everything she can send me.’
‘Yes, yes, I will tell her,’ replied Nell, in a muffled voice, as she turned away repeating in her inmost heart,—‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’
As she walked into the farm parlour, she encountered Hugh Owen, who looked at her through and through.