There was a chamber; an admission hesitatingly made, even at this modest hostelry, to a young gentleman arriving without either servant, luggage, box, horse, coach, or dog, and by means of a vile rickety little cart. Yet, such was Her Ladyship’s swagger, notwithstanding a full splash of mud on the tip-end of her handsome little chin, she was presently conducted to a decent chamber, up-stairs, at the rear, it is true, yet overlooking the green, where a game of bowls was in progress, and with a fine trellis, thick with vines, beneath its small-paned window.
“Was there an ordinary?”
Oh, the shame and humiliation of it! that the daughter of the Earl of Exham should be put to such an ebb, instead of ordering the best the house afforded sent at once to her room.
Aye, there was an ordinary of two dishes and a pastry at ten-pence, and it would be ready in the quarter hour.
“Ten-pence.”
Her Ladyship had just eleven pence ha’penny left in her purse.
Yet, thought she, refreshed by a good meal and the leaving of her weapon as a hostage for her lodging, she would better eat than faint to-night, whatever might betide on the morrow.
While she washed her hands, after hiding the bundle under the feather bed, Her Ladyship heard the ring of horses’ hoofs on the stone pave of the inn yard; and her quick ear even detected the fact that one of the steeds went lame.
She peered out of window and beheld Sir Percy astride of his own long roan, with Grigson just dismounting from the smoking black.
“This is cursed luck!” mutters the master, as he himself, out of saddle, stoops to examine the roan’s much swollen off hind-leg.