“And God bless you, dear old Martha,” said the young lady, looking towards the door through which she had just passed; “the truest and kindest soul on earth.”
Sir Richard did not come back. She saw him no more that evening.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
AT THE BAR OF THE “GUY OF WARWICK.”
Next evening there came, not Richard, but a note saying that he would see Alice the moment he could get away from town. As the old servant departed northward, her solitude for the first time began to grow irksome, and as the night approached, worse even than gloomy.
Her extemporised household made her laugh. It was not even a skeleton establishment. The kitchen department had dwindled to a single person, who ordered her luncheon and dinner, only two or three plats, daily, from the “Guy of Warwick.” The housemaid's department was undertaken by a single servant, a short, strong woman of some sixty years of age.
This person puzzled Alice a good deal. She came to her, like the others, with a note from her brother, stating her name, and that he had engaged her for the few days they meant to remain roughing it at Mortlake, and that he had received a very good account of her.