“No!” he answered, before she could say more. “That is just what I don’t know, my girl. I have taken you on trust and you are pretty enough! But I know Clyne, and he is interested in you. And his taste is good enough for me!”
“Let me pass!” she cried.
He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly behind the horse’s heels and stood free. Hornyold wheeled about, and with an oath:
“You sly baggage!” he cried. “You are not going to escape so easily! You——”
There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance beyond her, was a stranger. The sight was so little to be expected in that solitary place, he had been so sure that they were alone and the girl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. The stranger came slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling magistrate and the indignant girl.
“Good morning,” he said, addressing her. “If I am not inopportune, I have a letter for you from Captain Clyne.”
“Then be good enough,” she answered, “first to take me out of the company of this person.” And she turned her shoulder on the justice, and taking the stranger with her—almost in his own despite—she sailed off; and, a very picture of outraged dignity, swept down the road.
Mr. Hornyold glared after her, his bridle on his arm. And his face was red with fury. Seldom had he been so served.
“A parson, by heaven!” he said. “A regular Methody, too, by his niminy-piminy get-up! Who is he, I wonder, and what in the name of mischief brought him here just at that moment? Ten to one she was looking to meet him, and that was why she played the prude, the little cat! To be sure. But I’ll be even with her—in Appleby gaol or out! As for him, I’ve never set eyes on him. And I’ve a good notion to have him taken up and lodged in the lock-up. Any way, I’ll set the runners on him. Not much spirit in him by the look of him! But she’s a spit-fire!”
Mr. Hornyold had been so long accustomed to consider the girls of the village fair sport, that he was considerably put out. True, Henrietta was not a village girl. She was something more, and a mystery; nor least a mystery in her relations with Captain Clyne, a man whom the justice admitted to be more important than himself. But she was in trouble, she was under a cloud, she was smirched with suspicion; she was certainly no better than she should be. And not experience only, but all the coarser instincts of the man forbade him to believe in such a woman’s “No.”