“Here she is, Wilfred,” she said, leading Joan forward by the hand.
The boy looked from one to the other too bewildered to know what to do. Oh, how lovely Joan looked in her red costume guarded with black velvet and the white linen chemise showing below her throat and beneath the velvet hem. But he was too bashful to advance.
Joan, however, was equal to the occasion. “Well, Wilfred, are you not going to speak to me?” and she stepped forward and threw her arms round his neck.
Aline withdrew and left the two children in the window seat, whence they emerged a few minutes afterwards and timidly drew near the group round the fire.
“Now tell us all about Holwick, Walter,” said Aline, making a place for the two children.
“Yes,” said Ian, “why were they so slow in pursuit?”
“Mistress Mowbray would not let them have the horses from the Hall and the folk broke the girths and bridles of their own horses, and finally they had to get fresh horses in Middleton. The excitement was tremendous; but the strangest thing to the most part of us was the behaviour of Mistress Mowbray. She seemed to be greatly concerned and wrung her hands and said, ‘By my Lady, I trust the child hath escaped,’ and, later in the day, Elspeth told me that she met Thomas in the lower quadrangle and he, knowing the hatred that Mistress Mowbray had toward you, must needs cry unto her. ‘Methinks those fresh horses from Middleton will soon bring the jade back,’ and she grew purple in the face and said to him that, if they did, she would see whether it were too late to lodge him in gaol because of the corn he had taken along with Andrew. I saw Thomas when I was there last. He is an ill creature, and he much misliked it when it was clear that Mistress Aline was safely away. Yet is he but a white livered knave. Father Ambrose rouseth my ire more than he.”
“But you spake of Mistress Mowbray,” said Ian.
“Yes, the first thing that she did was to send over to Appleby that very night for Mistress Audry, who came the next morning. Elspeth said that the proud woman wept on her neck, so that it were pity to see. I would not have been in the place of Father Martin or Father Austin if they had fallen into her power. For days she made the household tremble under the weight of her authority.
“The next day Master Richard came back looking like a broken man. He said he had tried everything but could do nothing. As the time passed on, and it gradually became clear that the pursuit had failed, he recovered himself.