‘Are you? Where?’
‘Oh, over into Friarsdale, on business. I don’t know when I shall be back. Some time before Christmas, of course, because Gilbert will be here then. You’ll have to do as well as you can.’
‘I shall do very well, thank you. I shall return a few of those numerous calls I have received. I like some of the people very much. I don’t think they look so dangerous as you seemed to think them. But, of course, tastes differ. And on the first fine day I intend to have a ride.’
‘I liked him very much when I had him before.... Isn’t evening an odd time to be setting off on a journey? Where is this Friarsdale that you speak of?’
‘Oh, I shall only go to Darlington to-night, and put up with a fellow I know there. Then I shall drive on into Friarsdale to-morrow.’
He still had not told her where it was, she noticed, nor what he wanted there. She was not going to ask again, and in a short time Otho said he must be off, wished her good afternoon, and departed. He had gone in intending to recommend her to cultivate Miss Wynter’s society, but the conversation which had taken place had caused him to abandon this design.
‘Magdalen and she will never get on. I shall leave them both to it. It’s plain to me that Eleanor is no fool in some things, whatever she may be in others; but I verily believe she’d sooner have old Lady Winthrop for a chum, or one of those charity-blanket Blundell girls, than Magdalen.’
In which surmise Otho was perfectly correct.
‘It’s a rum sort of thing altogether,’ he reflected. ‘I shall ask Gilbert what he thinks about it.’
It was on the following day that Eleanor, looking forth, decided that there was a change in the weather, which decidedly entitled her to the ride she had spoken of to Otho. The clouds had parted, and the blue smiled forth, and the sun lent his aid to enliven the prospect. Eleanor promptly ordered her horse to be saddled and brought round immediately after an early lunch. In obedience to this order, it appeared, and she was ready for it shortly before two o’clock. She found the lad William holding her horse, and Barlow, the old butler, standing at the door. William, it is necessary to state, was not a native of Bradstane, nor, indeed, of Teesdale at all, but of Swaledale, to the south, of which locality he was very proud, and concerning which he was in the habit of relating many tales of wonder. It was a subject on which his mistress already loved to draw him out, and he was nothing loath to discourse upon it. He had begun to plume himself amongst the other servants on being Miss Askam’s own retainer, and would have felt bitterly injured had she selected any one but himself as her attendant.