She laughed. “Nonsense! I only wish Rose might see you! You have met Rose, so you will not be surprised to learn that she cannot approve of a gentleman’s being seen on the highway in his shirt.”
“Torn, too, but she has promised to mend it for me. I am very much obliged to her, and not only for that cause. She came to see whether I was a fit and proper person to be permitted to go with you to Tideswell, and she decided that I was.”
“Yes, she did. I beg your pardon! but she was used to be my nurse, you know, and nothing will persuade her that I am twenty-six years of age, and very well able to take care of myself. She is the dearest creature, but she is for ever preaching propriety to me.”
“I should think she has some pretty strong notions of propriety,” he agreed.
“Alas, poor Rose, she has indeed, and they have all been overset!”
He was watching her profile, thinking how delightfully she smiled, and how surely her expressive countenance reflected her changing moods. “Have they? How did that come about?” he said.
She looked mischievous, chuckling deep In her throat. “She is in love with a highwayman!”
“What? Oh, no, impossible!”
“I assure you! She won’t admit it—never speaks of it!—but it’s quite true. I know nothing, of course! If I dare to question her I get nothing for my pains but a tremendous scold, and when I was saucy enough to ask her if he does not come secretly to Kellands to see her she would have boxed my ears, could she but have reached them! But I am very sure he does. And the ridiculous thing is that she is the most respectable creature alive, and very nearly forty years old! I daresay no one could be more shocked than she is herself, but make up her mind never to see him again she cannot! Mind, not a word of this to her!”
“Good God, I should not dare! But how came it about?”