“Perhaps you heard what I was going to be married?”
“No. I don’t think how as it was that neither.”
“Well, never mind me; have you seen Miss Caresfoot—the young lady you saw the day you drove me to the Abbey House—anywhere about lately?”
Arthur waited for the old man’s lingering answer with all his heart upon his lips.
“Lor’, yes, sir, that I have; I saw her this morning driving through the Roxham market-place.”
“And how did she look?”
“A bit pale, I thought, sir; but well enough, and wonnerful handsome.”
Arthur gave a sigh of relief. He felt like a man who has just come scatheless through some horrible crisis, and once more knows the sweet sensation of safety. What a load the old man’s words had lifted from his mind! In his active imagination he had pictured all sorts of evils which might have happened to Angela during his year of absence. Lovers are always prone to such imaginings, and not altogether without reason, for there would seem to be a special power of evil that devotes itself to the derangement of their affairs, and the ingenious disappointment of their hopes. But now the vague dread was gone, Angela was not spirited away or dead, and to know her alive was to know her faithful.
As they drove along, the old ostler continued to volunteer various scraps of information which fell upon his ears unheeded, till presently his attention was caught by the name Caresfoot.
“What about him?” he asked, quickly.