“Luckily for Mistress Audry no one thought of questioning her as she had been away so long; but every one was marvelling who it could possibly have been that had dropped on a sudden from heaven.
“Then news began to leak through. First they heard that two of the pursuers had been buried at Haltwhistle. Then came the news of the night that you spent at Brampton. Wilfred Ackroyd was found and stuck to his tale that you had gone to Carlisle, but they found nothing there.”
“Oh, Wilfred!” said Aline.
“I cannot help it,” he said, “I did laugh when I saw them galloping off the wrong way.”
“Timothy held his peace,” continued Walter, “and no one seemed to connect the drowned prisoner in the Eden with Mistress Aline. Indeed I doubt if the tale of your drowning ever reached Holwick, your Grace. The priests went south and Master Mowbray failed to track them, at any rate at first. I believe he did eventually get into communication, but they refused to say anything.
“It seemed pretty clear that Mistress Aline had escaped but who was her saviour has remained to this day an insoluble mystery.”
“Then they guessed nothing from your letter, Ian?” said Aline.
“No,” said Walter. “When I was there your note, that you sent in a round about way through Master Eustace Cleveland, had just arrived. They were overjoyed to hear of the child’s safety and after much discussion came to the conclusion that Cleveland himself had something to do with it in spite of his denial. ‘Marry,’ said Mistress Mowbray, ‘I saw the way he was taken with the child.’ ‘So was every one except yourself, woman,’ said Master Richard, ‘that proves nothing.’ Mistress Mowbray mumbled something about not taking up with every new face, like some people, and Master Richard did not press the point.”
“Who told you that?” asked Aline.
“Mistress Audry, and she says that since the first few days, when her anger had passed, her mother has been much gentler than was her wont to every one. She has had your little garden carefully wrought over. ‘Mistress Aline might come back,’ she says. She is much changed.