“Of course we cannot! Either way I am persuaded you would catch your death! There must be a house hereabouts which would lend us shelter! What are those lights over there?”
They plainly shone from the windows of a residence set a little back from the road. The groom volunteered the information that he had noticed some lodge gates a few steps back.
“Good!” said Arabella briskly. “We will walk up to it, ma’am, and beg them to give us shelter for a little while.”
Miss Blackburn, a timorous soul, protested feebly. “They would think it so strange of us!”
“No, why should they?” returned Arabella, “Why, when a carriage had an accident outside our gates last year, Papa sent Harry out at once to offer shelter to the travellers! We cannot shiver for an hour or more in that horrid carriage, ma’am, with nothing to do! Besides, I am shockingly hungry, and I should think they would be bound to offer us refreshment, would not you? I am sure it is dinner-time, and past!”
“Oh, I do not think we should!” was all Miss Blackburn had to say, and it seemed so stupid to Arabella that she paid no heed to it, but desired the groom to escort them to the lodge gates before riding off to Grantham. This he did, and the ladies, dismissing him there, trod up the short drive to the house, one of them murmuring disjointed protests, the other perceiving no reason in the world why she should not claim a hospitality anyone in Yorkshire would have been eager to offer.
IV
It was at about this moment that that erratic young sprig of fashion, Lord Fleetwood, fixed his friend, and host, Mr. Beaumaris, with a laughing eye, and demanded in a rallying tone: “Well! You promise me a rare day with the hounds tomorrow—by the by, where do we meet?—but what— what, Robert, do you offer me for my entertainment this evening?”
“My cook,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “is generally thought to be an artist in his own line. A Frenchman: I think you will like his way of dressing a Davenport chicken, while some trick he has of flavouring a Benton sauce—”
“What, did you send Alphonse down, then, from London?” interrupted Lord Fleetwood, momentarily diverted.