“An enemy, an enemy! A grand gentleman, who will leave her to pine her heart away! What kind of man is he, that Hyde Stockhausen?” she continued, turning to me fiercely.
“Kind of man? A pleasant one. I have not heard any ill of him.”
“Rich?”
“No. Perhaps he will be rich some time. He makes bricks, you know, now. That is, he superintends the men.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered: and I don’t suppose there was much connected with Hyde she did not know. Looking this way, looking that, she at length began to walk, slowly and painfully, towards Hyde’s gate. The thought had crossed me—why did she not take Kettie away on one of their long expeditions, if she dreaded him so much. But the rheumatism lay upon her still too heavily.
Flinging open the gate, she went across the garden, not making for the proper entrance, but for a lighted room, whose French-window stood open to the ground. Hyde was there, just sitting down to supper.
“Come in with me,” she said, turning her head round to beckon me on.
But I did not choose to go in. It was no affair of mine that I should beard Hyde in his den. Very astonished indeed must he have been, when she glided in at the window, and stood before him. I saw him rise from his chair; I saw the astounded look of old Deborah Preen when she came in with his supper ale in a jug.
What they said to one another, I know not. I did not wish to listen: though it was only natural I should stay to see the play out. Just as natural as it was for Preen to come stealing round through the kidney beans to the front-garden, an anxious look on her face.
“What does that old gipsy woman want with the young master, Mr. Ludlow? Is he having his fortune told?”