challenge them.
He was in grey homespun, with rough woollen stockings, and wooden-soled shoes. His face was bronzed and bearded, his hair touched with grey. There was malevolence in his air, a truculence which vanished the moment his keen blue eyes lighted on this handsome woman in her riding-habit of brown velvet.
'Ye be early astir, ma'am,' was his greeting, a lingering suspicion in his voice.
'There is occasion for it, Master Leigh,' said she, giving the reins to Nat, and coming lightly to earth. 'I am seeking Mr. Vallancey.'
His face remained impassive.
'Whom did ye zay?' he inquired, as though the name uttered were one that he now heard for the first time.
She smiled as she advanced towards the porch.
'I said Mr. Vallancey,' she replied, and explained: 'I am Lady Mary Ormington. You will have heard my name from him.'
'I have not, ma'am,' said he. But he drew aside to make way for her, and she stepped airily past him into the hall.
It was a long, low-ceilinged chamber, paved in stone and panelled in oak that had all but blackened. In this was ruddily reflected a flickering light from the logs that burnt in the great cowled fireplace. There were leather cushions on the oak settle against the wall; a harpsichord stood open in the embrasure of the long window, and some sheets of music lay upon it. There were books on a table in mid-chamber, and a copper bowl filled with late roses, whose fragrance hung sweetly upon the air. For a rude homestead the place breathed a singular refinement.
On a side-table there was a tall white jug and a glass retaining a film of the milk that it had lately held.
''Tis what I most need,' cried her ladyship. 'I have ridden all night, and neither bite nor sup have I had since Dorchester.'
She took up the jug. It was half full of fresh milk. She looked doubtfully at the used glass, then set the rim of the jug to her dainty lips, and drank deeply.
The farmer's eyes never left her. But not the grace of her carriage, not the richness of her attire, not the noble beauty of her face was it that engaged his sole attention. His was the suspicious nature of a rustic, and of a rustic with something to hide?something that it would be dangerous for him to have it known he harboured.
What if she were a spy of Bloody Jeffreys? Queer tales of his wiliness abounded in the countryside, and Vallancey had been a notorious rebel. To capture him the King's men might adopt sly shifts. It was like them, thought Leigh, to send a woman on the business of discovering his whereabouts.
The lady set down the jug and broke in upon his musings.
'Come, Master Leigh, will you send to tell Mr Vallancey that I am here?'
'You know my name, ma'am,' said Leigh woodenly.
'I have it from Mr. Vallancey?he told me in his letters.'
He scratched his head, still dubious. Then there was an interruption.
The door leading to the interior was opened, and on the threshold a girl came to a sudden halt, checked at the sight of this splendid stranger.
Lady Mary considered her in a swift glance of some astonishment. She was slight to the point of frailness, arrayed in grey homespun, with a band of black silk at waist and hem, and a deep collar of white lawn descending to a point across her breast. A little quakeress she looked in that sober garb. Her face was delicately tinted; her red lips were parted now in the surprise reflected in her deep blue eyes?eyes that announced her kinship to Joseph Leigh.
From the crown of her golden head to the soles of her dainty shoes, she explained to Lady Mary the refinement of that chamber which was a setting proper for so fair a jewel.
Even as her ladyship looked, the surprise in the child's eyes turned to recognition. She advanced a step.
'Lady Mary!' she exclaimed.
Her ladyship's brows went up in quick astonishment.
'Why, child,' quoth she, 'how comes it that you know me?'
'I have seen your picture. Stephen has it in a locket,' she explained, and left Lady Mary speechless with fresh and great surprise that the familiar manner in which the yeoman's daughter spoke of a gentleman of Mr. Vallancey's quality.
'Why, then, there's no more ado,' said Leigh. 'Your ladyship will forgive my caution, but a want on't might ha' put a nooze about my own neck as well as Mr. Vallanzey's.'
'I understand,' said she. 'Now that you are reassured, pray summon Mr. Vallancey.'
'I'll zend for him,' said Leigh. 'He rose betimes to go a-fishing.' In that moment across the cobbles of the yard came a clatter of feet. A shock-headed boy, breathless from running, flung himself into the room.
'Zoldiers!' he gasped out in terror. 'There be zoldiers at St. Mary?and?and?they be a-looking for Master Vallanzey!'
There was a sharp cry from Leigh's daughter; the colour had perished in her cheeks; her eyes were full of fear and horror, and her hand had flown to her breast as if to repress its sudden tumult.
Lady Mary observed these signs of deep concern with a sickness of misgiving.
'Send for him at once,' she bade the farmer, and her tone was one of cold authority. 'He has nothing to fear. The soldiers will not harm him. Let him be told so from me. And as you go, Master Leigh, give a thought to my groom out there. He has ridden all night with me, and is still fasting.'
The yeoman bowed. Her ladyship's tone and manner were such as compelled obedience. He turned and departed with the lad who had brought news of the military.
Her ladyship seated herself in a leather armchair by the table, and proceeded to draw off her embroidered riding-gloves.
Lucy Leigh approached her, between eagerness and timidity?eagerness to know more of the immunity which her ladyship had promised Stephen Vallancey, timidity of one so regal and commanding.
'Your ladyship said,' she murmured, 'that the soldiers will not harm your cousin?'
'My cousin?' quoth her ladyship, her fine brows again contracting. As swiftly they regained their smoothness. 'I said so?yes,' she replied. But her tone was such as to discourage further questions, and for a moment Lucy stood hesitating betwixt fear of her ladyship and anxiety for knowledge.
In that moment Mary Ormington weighed the situation.
Why had Vallancey lied to this child, and told her that the lady whose picture he carried was his cousin?
Her ladyship had heard of Vallancey some of those things which are seldom heard by a man's betrothed. She had been told of his reputation for dalliance, his irrepressible gallantry, and she had striven loyally to disbelieve it all. Yet here it seemed was proof. And as she looked upon the gentle, trusting child before her she was moved to a great pity for her, to a great anger against Vallancey who could so unscrupulously lighten the tedium of his concealment, gathering a heart as lightly as one gathers a rose-bud, to wear it for a day and then leave it broken and wilted without another thought.
'Can your ladyship not tell me more?' Lucy implored 'I am in an agony of fear for him.'
Lady Mary observed that the child expressed herself like a person of some culture, in the musical rising and falling inflexion of the west country.
'Ye've grown fond of him, child, it seems,' said her ladyship.
The girl's scarlet lips and averted eyes sent a stab through Lady Mary's heart. But there was worse to come.
'We are to be married when this trouble is over,' said Lucy softly.
She never saw Lady Mary's sudden start. Nor when presently, after a spell of silence, she raised her eyes to her visitor's face did she observe its deep pallor.
'It is a great honour for you,' said her ladyship, her voice expressionless. 'Does your father know of it?'
'Not yet. We have not told him. Stephen desired me to wait until matters should be easier for him.'
'Ah!'
Her ladyship rose, her face marble-white and marble-calm. Her resolve at the moment was to call her groom and ride away as she had come, without seeing Vallancey, taking Jeffreys' pardon with her, and leaving her betrothed to his fast-approaching fate.
