Hilary’s friend, the hostler, was holding the bridle of Black Bess at the entrance, when the Squire rode up on his gray hunter, and Sir Philip noticed at once that the mare carried a side-saddle.
“So you have lady visitors here, I see?” he said, pulling up his horse before the archway.
Jim the hostler’s sympathies were all with the lovers, and he recognized at once the necessity for putting the angry father off the scent.
“Not as I knows on, sir,” he answered, pulling his forelock.
“Then what is the meaning of that side-saddle?”
“I suppose the missis is going for a ride, sir,” the man answered, with an affectation of stupidity in his face and manner.
“What! on that horse? That isn’t one of your animals?”
“No, sir. It’s been left here by a gentleman for a day or two, and we’ve got to exercise it every day.”
Still Sir Philip did not appear satisfied, and the hostler was wondering whether he could not by some means convey a warning to the young couple in the coffee-room, when, as ill-luck would have it, his master, the landlord, came out into the courtyard at that identical moment, and in answer to Sir Philip’s point-blank inquiry as to whether he had seen Miss Cranstoun, blurted out that she was at that moment within the house, talking to a friend in the coffee-room.
The landlord was thinking of his lease, and not of Stella’s love affair, and he volunteered the further information that Miss Cranstoun had only been there about ten minutes, having borrowed Mr. Pritchard’s horse to go to Grayling and back.