Five minutes later Basset crossed the court in search of his horse. Mrs. Toft’s door stood open and a stream of firelight and candlelight poured from it and cut the January fog. She was hard at work, cooking funeral meats with the help of a couple of women; for quietly as John Audley had lived, he could not be buried without some stir. Odd people would come, drawn by the Audley name, squires who boasted some distant connection with the line, a few who had been intimate with him in past days. And the gentry far and wide would send their carriages, and the servants must be fed. Still the preparations jarred on Basset as he crossed the court. He felt the bustle an outrage on the mourning girl he had left, and on his own depression.
Probably Mrs. Toft had set the door open that she might waylay him, for as he went by she came out and stopped him. “Mr. Basset, sir!” she said in a low voice. “Is this true, what Toft tells me? I declare, when I heard it, you could ha’ knocked me down with a common dip!” She was wiping her hands on her apron. “That the young lady is to marry his lordship?”
“I believe it is true,” Basset said coldly. “But you had better let her take her own time to make it known. Toft should not have told you.”
“Never fear, sir, I’ll not let on. But, Lord’s sakes, who’d ha’ thought it? And she’ll be my lady! Not that she’s not an Audley, and there’s small differ, and she’ll make none, or I don’t know her! Well, indeed, I hope she’s wise, but wedding cake, make it as rich as you like, it’s soon stale. And for him, I don’t know what the Master would have said if he’d known it! I thought things would come out,” with a quick look at Basset, “quite otherways! And wished it, too!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Toft,” he said quietly.
“Just so, sir, you’ll excuse me. Well, it’s not many months since the young lady came, and look at the changes! With the old Master dead, and you going in for elections—drat ’em, I say, plaguy things that set folks by the ears—and Mr. Colet gone and ’Truria that unsettled, and Toft for ever wool-gathering, I shall be glad when tomorrow’s over and I can sit down and sort things out a bit!”
“Yes, Mrs. Toft.”
“And speaking of elections reminds me. You know they two Boshams of the Bridge End, sir?”
“I know them. Yes.”
Mrs. Toft sniffed. “They’re sort of kin to me, and middling honest as town folks go. But two silly fellows, always meddling and making and gandering with things they’d ought to leave to the gentry! The old lord was soft with them, and so they’ve a mind now to see who is the stronger, they or his lordship.”