“And came in search of me?”
“Precisely,” he replied. “Being empowered to do so,” he continued, with a slight but formal bow, “by Captain Anthony Clyne, to whom I have the honour—my name is Sutton—of being related in the capacity of chaplain.”
She coloured more violently with shame than before with anger: and all her troubles came back to her. Probably this man knew all; knew what she had done and what had happened to her. It was cruel—oh, it was cruel to send him! For a moment she could not collect her thoughts or master her voice. But at last,
“Oh!” she said confusedly. “I see. A lovely view from here, is it not?”
“Yes, to be sure,” he replied, with the same precision with which he had spoken before. “I ought to have noticed it.”
“And you bring me a letter?”
“It was Captain Clyne’s wish that I——” he hesitated, and was plainly embarrassed—“that I should, in fact, offer my company for a day or two. While you are under the care of the good woman at the inn.”
She turned her face towards him, and regarded him with a mixture of surprise and distaste. Then,
“Indeed?” she said coldly. “In what capacity, if you please?”
But the words said, she felt her cheeks grow hot. They thought so ill of her, she had so misbehaved herself, that a duenna was not enough; a clergyman must be sent to lecture her. By-and-by he would talk goody-goody to her, such as they talked to Lucy in The Fairchild Family! Save that she was grown up and Lucy was not!