This announcement called forth questions, which again required replies; and after hearing the whole story, Lady Anne exclaimed--
"Get him well as soon as possible, for I intend to make you all come down and spend a happy week with me in the country--either at Harley, or Belford, or Caermarthen, or somewhere--Lady Fleetwood, and Maria, and you, and Middleton, and Mr. Winkworth, and all. I took a great liking to that old man, Charles, so you must engage him for me."
Charles Marston promised to obey; and after a few more words, with which, perhaps, the reader may have little to do, he was taking his departure, and had already reached the door of the drawing-room, when Lady Anne called him back.
"Charles! Charles!" she said, "I want to speak to you. And now, remember, I am talking seriously for once in my life: I am going to make a declaration, so remember it. It is somewhat unusual, and rather the reverse of what ordinarily takes place; but no matter. I love you truly and sincerely, and none but you;" and she laid her hand affectionately upon his arm, adding, "I never shall love any other; and I say this because your confidence, without any wish on my part to put it to the proof, may be tried somewhat severely."
"It will stand the test," answered Charles Marston. "I were unworthy of your love, dear Anne, if I could doubt you for a moment."
CHAPTER XVI.
The day was near its close, and the keen, clear easterly wind had in the end swept all clouds and mist from the air, leaving the features of the landscape sharp and defined, in the peculiar purple light of the evening, when a man with a brass-bound mahogany box upon his back stopped at the door of the little hovel, on the wide, wild common to which I have so frequently had occasion to refer.
About three-quarters of an hour before, in trudging with his pack out of the neighbouring little town, he had been passed by a post-chaise coming from the side of London; and on turning his head he had seen that it contained only a single traveller--a handsome and fashionably-dressed young man, with a complexion considerably darker than is usually found amongst Englishmen. The pedlar very naturally concluded that the stranger was nothing to him, nor he to the stranger, and that he should never behold his face again; and trudging upon his way over the common, he turned a few steps aside, to see if the inhabitants of the hovel, who had more than once purchased bodkins and needles and such little articles of him, would now be tempted by any of his wares.
Pedlars--although by continual chaffering with every different variety of human beings they usually acquire a great deal of shrewdness, not to say cunning--may be deceived in their calculations as well as other people, and it proved so in the present case. He knocked at the door of the cottage, and then shook it, saying to himself, "The old woman's in one of her moping fits, I dare say." But still he received no answer; and then, going to the little window, he tried to look in. There was a board up in the inside, however, which effectually prevented him from seeing, and he was about to turn away, when he perceived a tall figure advancing towards him from the side of the high-road.
Now, the pedlar was a stout, broad-shouldered, clean-limbed man, of about fifty years of age; and having passed the greater part of his life in hardy excise, he was a match for most men in point of strength; but having had occasion, more than once, to fight for the worldly goods and chattels which he carried on his back, he always cast a suspicious eye towards any one who approached him hastily, which was the case with the stranger; and therefore, unslinging his pack, he put it down behind him, that he might have his right arm more at liberty for the exercise of the stout oaken staff with which it was armed.