“One was Mr. David and the other a Mr. Brett?”
“Oh, was that the tall gentleman’s name?”
“I expect so. Well, here’s the missus’s written order that whenever they want to come to the ’ouse or go anywheres in the park it’s O.K.”
Mrs. Crowe was wise enough to keep her own counsel, but when the butler retired, she said:
“Then I’ll obey the missus, an’ master can settle it with her. I don’t hold by Eye-talians, anyhow.”
[Chapter VI]
An Old Acquaintance
Helen was very much upset by the painful scene which had just been enacted. Its vulgarity appalled her. In a little old-world hamlet like Sleagill, a riotous cow or frightened horse supplied sensation for a week. What would happen when it became known that the rector’s daughter had been attacked by the Squire of Beechcroft in the park meadow, and saved from his embraces only after a vigorous struggle, in which her defender was David Hume-Frazer, concerning whom the villagers still spoke with bated breath?
Of course, the girl imagined that many people must have witnessed the occurrence. The appearance of Brett, of the waiting groom, and of a chance labourer who now strode up the village street, led her to think so.