Howlie Seaborne had never before been at close quarters with a young lady, the nearest approach to the species having been those little village girls whose hair he had pulled, and upon whom he had sprung out from dark corners by way of showing his lofty contempt, ever since he could remember. Miss Ridgeway interested him a great deal, and after the few days of close observation which it had taken him to find her a place in his experience, he persisted in regarding her with the indulgence due to a purely comic character.
“There be a gentleman down below,” he remarked, when he had finished snorting.
“A gentleman? What gentleman?”
“Moy! Just about as smart as a lord. Oi know ’im too. ’Im as was general o’ the soldjers the noight they was foightin’ Rebecca. Oi moind ’im, for ’e shook me crewel ’ard by the shoulder.” He rubbed the ill-used part.
Isoline shut the door in his face with a bang. The sudden draught put out the candle, and she was obliged to light it again to make the additional survey of her face which the situation below-stairs demanded. She took a hand-glass from the drawer, and assured herself that every view of it was satisfactory; then she hurried down the wooden staircase which creaked under her foot, and stood a moment with beating heart to collect herself at the door of her uncle’s study.
Mr. Lewis was standing by the round table in the middle of the room, and before him, with his hand on the mantelpiece, was Harry Fenton. The younger man had one foot on the fender, and from his boots went up a lively steam which showed that he had ridden over some heavy bits of ground; his spurs, too, were coated with mud, and he seemed to be appreciating the blaze that leaped gallantly in the chimney. He wore a long cloth coat, which made him look about twice his natural size.
“Mr. Fenton has come over from Waterchurch on business,” said Mr. Lewis, turning to her as she entered, “and I am sorry to say that his horse has cast a shoe on the way, and it has delayed his arrival till now. But I have persuaded him to stay here for the night, which is very pleasant.”
“It is most kind of you, sir,” interrupted Harry.
“My dear boy,” exclaimed the Vicar, “it is impossible to think of taking the road again at such an hour, and with such a distance before you as Waterchurch. I am sorry,” he went on, taking up a knitted comforter and beginning to put it round his neck, “that I have just been urgently sent for by a parishioner, and shall have to leave you for an hour, but my niece will see that all is made ready for you. Isoline, my dear, I will trust to you to look after Mr. Fenton till I come back.”
Harry had started from his home that morning with a couple of instruments in his pockets not generally carried about by riders. They bulged rather inside his coat, and he took great care, as he mounted, that Llewellyn, who was leaning against the stable-wall watching him depart, should not see them; they were a smith’s buffer and a small-sized pair of pincers for drawing nails out of horses’ shoes.