"And have you never observed the miserable skin-and-bone plight of my lord's hounds?"
"They are not thinner, Charles says, than most hounds in good training: when dogs get fat, they become lazy, lose the faculty of finding game, and the inclination of bringing it down."
"Dogs it is true, ought not to be pampered and surfeited, but they ought to be fed." Upon this, Annette would vehemently maintain that fed they were, and amply, as she had seen Elliott cut up their meat; whilst the friendly newsmonger would charitably hint, that her intended knew as well as most men how to turn an honest penny, by cheating the dogs of their food, and selling it elsewhere.
Annette cared little for inuendos which she attributed chiefly to malice and ill-nature. None are so difficult to convince as those who are obstinately deaf to conviction, and there is an idolatry of affection which sometimes burns fonder and deeper, as its object is contemned and despised by the world. Annette had also some idea, that these, and other reports to the prejudice of Charles, originated with an unsuccessful rival, though poor William Curry, amiable, single-minded, and good-humoured as he was, never breathed in her presence, a syllable to the disparagement of Elliott.
Time sped, and upon an occasion when Lord Mortimer returned for a week or two to his Castle, the conduct of his chief huntsman was reported to him; but Charles with consummate art, so vindicated himself, and so contrived to disgrace his accusers, that when the young baron again left home, he stood higher perhaps than ever, in his confidence and favour.
It was the bright summer-time, the period when rural folks make holiday, (at least they did so then, but times have strangely altered of late in once merry England,) the woods put on their brightest green, and the people their finest clothes, for there were wakes, fairs, and rustic meetings innumerable in the vicinity of the Castle. Charles the huntsman might, as usual, be seen at these fêtes for nothing, but after his late victory, he carried his head higher, assumed a swaggering gait, and looked his neighbours out of countenance with impudent defiance.
The village feasts were not yet over, when late one night, a cavalier, passing through one of the great forests which surrounded Mortimer Castle, beheld, (for it was a moon-light night,) a female form slowly sauntering about the bridle-way in which he was riding, and uttering heavy moans and sobs. At first, taking this figure for something supernatural, the traveller was startled, but quickly recovering himself, he rode boldly up to, and addressed, the object of his idle fears:—"I have been waiting here for hours," replied the young woman, for such indeed she was, "and my friend is not yet come; I am sadly afraid, sir, some accident may have happened to him."
"Him!" quoth the stranger laughing, "O my good girl, if you be waiting for a gentleman, no wonder you're disappointed. He has played you false, rely upon it, and won't come to night,—so you'd better go home."
"O sir! O my Lord!—I cannot—I dare not! What would father and mother say? and what could I say?"
"Ay—Annette,—Annette Martin,—what could you say?"