Robert Woodhall returned at once to his own room, saying as he entered, "I can not find the scoundrel; but he will be here soon, for he knows my hour, and that I won't endure negligence."
Henry Woodhall rose with a look of impatience, and walked up and down the room. A few minutes after, there was a knock at the door, and the servant entered.
"You are late," said his master, in an affectedly sharp tone.
"No, sir, to a minute," replied Roger; "the castle clock is now striking."
"Well, that matters not," cried Henry; "take this letter to the room of Master Ralph Woodhall, and bring me back an answer, if he thinks fit to send one."
"Instantly, sir," said the man, taking the note with a very humble bow; and, with a look of perfect unconsciousness, he quitted the room. He then directed his course at once toward the apartment of Ralph, but he communed with himself as he went. "A guinea!" he said; "a guinea! and something more in prospect! Upon my soul, my honorable master is generous and free of his money. Hang me if I do not spoil this little scheme for him, just to show him that he can not work without me. But I must be cautious, so that he does not find out who did it."
He put the letter in his pocket, and walked straight on to Ralph's door, where he knocked.
Now most of the rooms in the duke's palace at Norwich had ante-rooms to them, which was the case here. Thus the door was opened, not by Ralph Woodhall himself, but by no less a person than Gaunt Stilling; and the servants of the two cousins stood face to face, eyeing each other for a moment with a somewhat sinister expression, like two quarrelsome dogs meeting suddenly at the corner of a street and deliberating, ere they set to, as to which shall give the first bite.
"Good morning to you, Mr. Stilling," said Roger, who was the first to drop his tail, if I may follow out my simile; for a soldier of the Tangier regiment might well be considered a very formidable opponent. "Let us forget all grudges. I have had no share, for my part, in doing you any wrong; and I now bear a message from my master to yours--not very willingly, for, to say the truth, I don't do much of my master's work willingly at all; but a man must gain his bread, you know."
"What is your message?" asked Gaunt Stilling, sharply, adding something, muttered between his teeth, which the other did not hear.