"Can I offer to set you down anywhere? The fly is certainly waiting for me, but--there is plenty of room."
"Oh thank you, no. You are very kind: but--no! I can walk quite well. I am obliged to you all the same."
The refusal was spoken very emphatically; especially the last No. Without turning again, she rapidly walked from the station, the porter carrying her parcels.
"I wonder who she is?" murmured Lucy aloud, looking back as she was about to enter the fly, her powdered servant standing to bow her in. For she saw that there was no luggage, save those small parcels, and was feeling somewhat puzzled.
"It is Mrs. Grey, my lady; she who lives at the Maze."
Had the footman, Giles, said it was an inhabitant of the world of spirits, Lucy would not have felt more painfully and disagreeably startled. She! And she, Lucy, had sat with her in the same carriage and talked to her on pleasant terms of equality! She, Mrs. Grey! Well, Theresa was right: the face would do for an angel's.
"Why, my dear Lady Andinnian, how pale you look! It's the heat, I suppose."
Lucy, half bewildered, her senses seeming to have gone she knew not whither, found herself shaking hands with the speaker, Miss Patchett: an elderly and eccentric lady who lived midway between the station and the village of Foxwood. Lucy mechanically asked her if she had come in the train.
"Yes," answered Miss Patchett. "I've been to London to engage a housemaid. And I am tired to death, my dear, and the London streets were like fire. I wish I was at home without having to walk there."
"Let the fly take you."