"Geoffrey Moncton, when next we meet, your secret and mine will be of equal value.
"Dinah North."
I was bitterly disappointed, and crushing the paper in my hand, I flung it as far from me as I could.
"Curse the old fiend! We shall yet meet. I will trace her to the utmost bounds of earth to bring her to justice."
I left the house in a terrible ill-humour, and remounting my horse, pursued my journey, to Derbyshire.
It was late on the evening of the second day, when I reached the little village over which my grandfather Rivers had exercised the pastoral office for nearly fifty years. The good man had been gathered to his fathers a few months before I was born. It was not without feeling a considerable degree of interest that I rode past the humble church, surrounded by its lofty screen of elms, and glanced at the greensward beneath whose daisy-sprinkled carpet, the
"Rude forefathers of the village slept."
The rain had fallen softly but perseveringly the whole day, and I was wet, hungry and tired. I hailed therefore the neat little inn, with its gay sign-board, white-washed walls and green window-blinds, as the most welcome and picturesque object which had met my sight for the last three hours.
"Stay all night, sir?" said the brisk lad, from whose helmet-like leathern cap the water trickled in the most obtrusively impertinent manner over his rosy, freckled face, as he ran forward to hold my horse. "Good accommodation for man and beast—capital beds, sir."
"Yes, yes," I replied, somewhat impatiently, as I threw him the reins and entered the brick passage of the inn. "Where is the master of the house?"