"Have I any clothes that I can hunt in, Morrison?" Mr. Arundel asked.
His factotum stared aghast at this question.
"You ain't a-goin' to 'unt, are you, Mr. Edward?" he inquired, anxiously.
"Never mind that. I asked you a question about my clothes, and I want a straightforward answer."
"But, Mr. Edward," remonstrated the old servant, "I don't mean no offence; and the 'orses is very tidy animals in their way; but if you're thinkin' of goin' across country,—and a pretty stiffish country too, as I've heard, in the way of bulfinches and timber,—neither of them 'orses has any more of a 'unter in him than I have."
"I know that as well as you do," Edward Arundel answered coolly; "but I am going to the meet at Marchmont Towers to-morrow morning, and I want you to look me out a decent suit of clothes—that's all. You can have Desperado saddled ready for me a little after eleven o'clock."
Mr. Morrison looked even more astonished than before. He knew his master's savage enmity towards Paul Marchmont; and yet that very master now deliberately talked of joining in an assembly which was to gather together for the special purpose of doing the same Paul Marchmont honour. However, as he afterwards remarked to the two fellow-servants with whom he sometimes condescended to be familiar, it wasn't his place to interfere or to ask any questions, and he had held his tongue accordingly.
Perhaps this respectful reticence was rather the result of prudence than of inclination; for there was a dangerous light in Edward Arundel's eyes upon this particular evening which Mr. Morrison never had observed before.
The factotum said something about this later in the evening.
"I do really think," he remarked, "that, what with that young 'ooman's death, and the solitood of this most dismal place, and the rainy weather,—which those as says it always rains in Lincolnshire ain't far out,—my poor young master is not the man he were."