"I was thinking so," said Mrs. Chattaway.
The servant returned to the room, and the conversation ceased. But his mistress, under some plea, dismissed him, saying she would ring. And then the thought was carried out. A sauce-tureen which happened to be on the table was made the receptacle for some of the hot meat, and Maude put on her bonnet and stole away with it.
An unlucky venture. In her haste to reach the lodge unmolested, she spilt some of the gravy on her dress, and was stopping to wipe it with her handkerchief, when she was interrupted by Mr. Chattaway. It was close to the lodge. Maude's heart, as the saying runs, came into her mouth.
"What's that? Where are you taking it to?" he demanded, for his eyes had caught the tureen before she could slip it under her mantle.
He peremptorily took it from her unresisting hand, raised the cover, and saw some tempting slices of hot roast beef, and part of a cauliflower. Had Maude witnessed the actual discovery of Rupert, she could not have felt more utterly terrified.
"I ask you, to whom were you taking this?"
His resolute tones, coupled with her own terror, were more than poor Maude could brave. "To Mark Canham," she faltered. There was no one she could mention with the least plausibility: and she could not pretend to be merely taking a walk with a tureen of meat in her hand.
"Was it Madam's doings to send this?"
Again she could only answer in the affirmative. Chattaway stalked off to the Hold, carrying the tureen.
His wife sat at the dinner-table, and James was removing some pastry as he entered. Regardless of the man's presence, he gave vent to his anger, reproaching her in no measured terms for what she had done. Meat and vegetables from his own table to be supplied to that profitless, good-for-nothing man, Canham, who already enjoyed a house and half-a-crown a week for doing nothing! How dared she be guilty of extravagance so great, of wilful waste?