Ella felt quite sorry for him; sorry for having spoken. She began to speak of what she had meant to do, but he interrupted her:
"I'll be nobody's pensioner; not even yours, Miss Winter. Many a time I've told the Squire I'd not be his. While I'm able to work I will work; and I mean to work on for you, ma'am, my strength permitting it. Time enough for me to leave you when that's gone--but I hope it's my life that will go first. I was faithful to my master, Miss Ella, and I'll be faithful to my mistress."
Ella held out her hand to him.
"Do you suppose I do not know that you are, my good old Aaron! But you should not talk of the workhouse. The Squire left you an annuity; he left you also some money. I shall add to it----"
"No, ma'am. Do you suppose I wanted the bit o' money his will gave to me? Not I. I have settled it on the boy--Hubert--every penny of it: as well as the few pounds I and my wife have saved. As to the annuity, I won't touch it."
Ella smiled, and did not contradict him. And so the question of the old servant's going was set at rest. But Aaron was not himself for days afterwards.
Hubert Stone's services were retained, at any rate for the present. He had had the management of the farm property and other matters for so long, that Miss Winter could not well have done without him. Neither had she any wish to dismiss him; he was an efficient steward, and she of course had no suspicion of his attachment to herself. She put him on a different footing, assigning to him a handsome salary, and decreeing that he should live away from the Hall, though a room in it would still be occupied by him as an office for his account-books and papers. It was supposed that he would take suitable apartments at Nullington; he might have had the best there; or perhaps set up a pretty home for himself with a man and maid to wait on him. Hubert did neither. To the intense surprise of the community he made an arrangement with John Tilney to enter on his spare bedroom and sitting-room--for the lodge was a commodious dwelling--and took up his abode there, Mrs. Tilney waiting on him as on any other gentleman.
Hubert had to see his young mistress almost daily about one matter of business or another, but he was careful to maintain towards her a suitable reserve. Nothing could be better than his manner. It would never do to betray the smallest sign of the volcano of passion that was surging within him.
Very little had been said between Ella and her aunt respecting the fright the latter got on the night of the Squire's funeral. The topic was an unpleasant one; and they ignored it by mutual consent. The only person spoken to about it was Dr. Spreckley: and it may be said that that arose from inadvertence.
A week or two subsequent to the Squire's death, one of the maids, Eliza, took a sore throat; it threatened to be a bad one, and Miss Winter sent for the good old doctor. Dr. Jago's attendance at the Hall had ceased with the Squire's death. Dr. Spreckley got the message late in the day, and it was evening when he started for Heron Dyke, glad and proud enough to be once more summoned there in his medical capacity.