"Who gave you this?" asked Jane Payland, looking at the dirty envelope with extreme disgust.
"It was a tramp as give it me—a tramp as I met in the village; and I'm to wait for an answer, please, and I'm to take it to him at the 'Hen and Chickens.'"
"How dare you bring Lady Eversleigh a letter given you by a tramp—a begging letter, of course? I wonder at your impudence."
"I didn't go to do no harm," expostulated Master Beckett. "He says to me, he says, 'If her ladyship once sets eyes upon that letter, she'll arnswer it fast enough; and now you cut and run,' he says; 'it's a matter of life and death, it is, and it won't do to waste time over it.'"
These words were rather startling to the mind of Jane Payland. What was she to do? Her own idea was, that the letter was the concoction of some practised impostor, and that it would be an act of folly to take it to her mistress. But what if the letter should be really of importance? What if there should be some meaning in the boy's words? Was it not her duty to convey the letter to Lady Eversleigh?
"Stay here till I return," she said, pointing to a bench in the lobby.
The boy seated himself on the extremest edge of the bench, with his hat on his knees, and Jane Payland left him.
She went straight to the suite of apartments occupied by Lady
Eversleigh.
Honoria did not raise her eyes when Jane Payland entered the room. There was a gloomy abstraction in her face, and melancholy engrossed her thoughts.
"I beg pardon for disturbing you, my lady," said Jane; "but a lad from the village has brought a letter, given him by a tramp; and, according to his account, the man talked in such a very strange manner that I thought I really ought to tell you, my lady; and—"