"And did you see my lord?" asked Mrs. Rushmere, with a look of intense curiosity mingled with awe upon her simple face.
"My lord," said Rushmere, with an ironical smile, contemptuously repeating his wife's words. "Surely he be no lord o' thine."
"Lawrence, you always do speak so disrespectful of Lord Wilton. It does not become poor folk like us to despise our betters."
"I owe him no favour, wife. I want no favours from him. It vexes me that the lass went to him on my affairs. As to his being better than me, I ha' still to learn that. My name is as good as his—in what do we differ? In the wealth, which by right belongs to me, of which a rascally king robbed my brave ancestors to reward his unprincipled favourite. It grieves my heart that a son of mine should be a servant to his son—an' that girl must bring me still lower, by reminding Lord Wilton of the degradation."
When the blood of the old man waxed warm, and he felt wrathy, he forgot half his provincialisms, and spoke and looked more like a gentleman. His wife felt little sympathy in her good man's anger, still less in his pride, which she was wont, behind his back, to speak of as perfectly ridiculous.
"Dorothy," she whispered, "what did my lord say about Gilbert?"
"He promised to write to Lord Fitzmorris, and obtain all the information he could respecting him. Oh, mother," she added, in a low voice, "he was so kind."
"But were you not afraid of speaking to a lord. I never spoke to a lord in my life. Lawrence is listening to what I am saying. Come upstairs, Dorothy, an' tell me all about it."
Dorothy was not sorry to escape from the storm that was lowering upon the yeoman's brow, to pour into Mrs. Rushmere's attentive ear all that she had seen and heard at the Hall.
She dwelt at great length upon the generous offer made by Lord Wilton, through Mrs. Martin, to give her a good education, and fit her for an assistant in his school.