“Take that to the gardener’s wife. If you agree with her about the price, you can have the cock and the two pullets.”
Mrs. Inchbare opened her lips—no doubt to express the utmost extremity of human gratitude. Before she had said three words, Lady Lundie’s impatience to reach the end which she had kept in view from the time when Mrs. Glenarm had left the house burst the bounds which had successfully restrained it thus far. Stopping the landlady without ceremony, she fairly forced the conversation to the subject of Anne Silvester’s proceedings at the Craig Fernie inn.
“How are you getting on at the hotel, Mrs. Inchbare? Plenty of tourists, I suppose, at this time of year?”
“Full, my leddy (praise Providence), frae the basement to the ceiling.”
“You had a visitor, I think, some time since of whom I know something? A person—” She paused, and put a strong constraint on herself. There was no alternative but to yield to the hard necessity of making her inquiry intelligible. “A lady,” she added, “who came to you about the middle of last month.”
“Could yer leddyship condescend on her name?”
Lady Lundie put a still stronger constraint on herself. “Silvester,” she said, sharply.
“Presairve us a’!” cried Mrs. Inchbare. “It will never be the same that cam’ driftin’ in by hersel’—wi’ a bit bag in her hand, and a husband left daidling an hour or mair on the road behind her?”
“I have no doubt it is the same.”
“Will she be a freend o’ yer leddyship’s?” asked Mrs. Inchbare, feeling her ground cautiously.