[CHAPTER III]
MISTRESS MARGARET WAYNFLETE
Jane had taken the lady back to the house-place and was hovering around her, with little of the grace of a maid-of-honour to be sure, but with a heartiness and zeal that more than atoned for any lack of style. From mother's withdrawing-room I fetched our chief household god, a small ancient silver goblet, and, filling it with wine, offered it to the stranger with what I supposed, no doubt wrongly, to be a modish bow. She drank a little, and then, at my urging, a little more.
"Madam," I said, "I think you do not need to be 'Molly Brown' any longer. Yon dragooner is quite certain that you are not here, and we can safely take advantage of his opinion. As for you, Jane, you've done splendidly, and I heartily thank you." I re-filled the goblet and handed it to Jane, saying, "Drink, Jane, to madam's good luck."
The honest girl blushed with joy at my words, and as for drinking wine out of the famous silver goblet of the Hanyards--such a distinction, as she conceived it, was reward enough for anything.
"Thanks are payment all too poor for what you have done, sir," said madam, "and any words of mine would make them poorer still. But, sir, I do thank you most heartily. And you, too, Jane, have done me splendid service. You are as brave and clever as you are bonny and pretty."
"Madam," said I, bowing low, "you are too kind to my services, which have, indeed, been rather crudely performed."
"Not so," she replied, "but with shrewd, ready wit and certain judgment. I cannot imagine myself in a tighter corner than at the bridge, and your device had the effective simplicity of genius. Your plan here was, to be sure, commonplace, but it, too, required caution and good acting, and you and Jane supplied both. It was nicer than popping me into some musty priest's hole, though I expect this ancient building has one."
I looked at the wall as half expecting the sword of Captain Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman to rattle to the ground under this awful insinuation.
"The only use our family has found for priests, madam," I said, "has been, I fear, to hunt them like vermin. As a Wheatman of the Hanyards, I'm afraid I'm a degenerate."