"Oh, serious, no."
The manner of the Squire was never gracious to his daughter; always imperious, but this day there was a peculiarity in it that struck her. There was, she felt instinctively, something in the background.
"What is it, father? I pray you tell me. She is not in any danger?"
"Oh, danger? No." A twitching of his cheeks marked inner uneasiness.
Bessie looked anxiously at him. "I am sure, father, you are hiding something from me."
"Go at once and get ready! Do not stop chattering here like a parrot," he roared forth, and Bessie fled.
Elizabeth had no anxiety over the weather. That was not the day of umbrellas, but then, neither was it the day of fine bonnets. The skirts were worn short, and did not trail in and collect the mud. A woman pinned up her gown, or looped it at the girdle, exposing a bright coloured petticoat, and below that her ankles, and there were many inches between the mud and the petticoat. A thick serge mantle covered gown and petticoat; it was provided with a hood that was drawn over the head, and bright eyes looked out of the hood and laughed at the rain and cold.
We sometimes wonder now how the world got on before the introduction of the umbrella. Very well. It was dryer, warmer, better protected in former days. It is only since the invention and the expansion of the parapluie, that those marvels of millinery, the nineteenth-century bonnet, piled up of feathers and flowers, and bead and lace, became possible. The umbrella has been a bell-shade under which it has grown.
Mr. Cleverdon was not communicative on the ride to Tavistock. Now and then he growled forth a curse on the weather, but said nothing against Magdalen. This surprised his daughter, who was accustomed to hear him grumble at his sister if she occasioned him any inconvenience; but she charitably set it down to real concern for Magdalen, and this increased her fear that more was the matter with her aunt than her father chose to admit.
Aunt Magdalen really was indisposed; but the indisposition was partly, if not chiefly, due to her distress of mind about her niece. She knew that her brother had resolved to act upon her own to marry Bess to young Crymes, and that he expected his sister to help him to overcome any opposition that might be encountered from Bessie. Poor Elizabeth had as little suspicion, as she accompanied her father to Tavistock, that he was about to sacrifice her, as had Isaac when he ascended Moriah at the side of Abraham.