Afterwards, in the loneliness of the woodland, Betty pressed a full purse into Denis’s unreluctant hand.
“Not a word to your lord—on your life!” she charged him; “but get all he needs and come to me for more—and we must move him to some comfortable refuge at once. Mind you, everything he needs and instantly.”
Denis’s face widened into a seraphic smile as he pressed the purse fondly.
“By the Virgin, my lady,” he said, “I shall have to be afther telling him a legend—faix, he’ll think I’ve found an angel of a Jew, yer ladyship!”
CHAPTER XXIII
MY LORD SPENCER
IT happened that when Lady Clancarty came back from her visit to the house in the forest, weary and tear-stained but happier and more peaceful, she found herself in trouble. She had been gone a long time and unhappily her absence had been noticed and commented upon. Faithful and devoted as Alice was, she was not quickwitted enough to invent excuses, and was, indeed, thoroughly frightened and distressed by her mistress’ absence which she could not help connecting in some way with Lord Clancarty. There had been, in consequence, a great hubbub at the Lion’s Head, and men were running hither and yon; while the servants, who had carried her chair, to save themselves from blame had not failed to give a highly colored account of her meeting with a strange man in the lane and her disappearance in his company. When Lady Betty came quietly back through the garden, hoping to escape to her room unobserved, she met Lord Spencer with his face as white as a sheet and his lids drooped low over his eyes. He stood in the door of the inn that opened upon the court, and his sister came upon him so unexpectedly that she had no time for flight. She knew the signs too well, however, not to be prepared, and her old spirit returned to her stronger than ever, and she held her head high. But Spencer did not intend to open the quarrel there in a public place, his mood was more dangerous. He was quite aware that the servants, and even the landlord, were peeping at them from the kitchen way, and he bowed courteously to his sister and offered her his hand.