Being lady of all she surveyed, Ethelberta crossed the leafy sward, and knocked at the door. She was interested in knowing the purpose of the peculiar little edifice.
The door was opened by a woman wearing a clean apron upon a not very clean gown. Ethelberta asked who lived in so pretty a place.
'Miss Gruchette,' the servant replied. 'But she is not here now.'
'Does she live here alone?'
'Yes--excepting myself and a fellow-servant.'
'Oh.'
'She lives here to attend to the pheasants and poultry, because she is so clever in managing them. They are brought here from the keeper's over the hill. Her father was a fancier.'
'Miss Gruchette attends to the birds, and two servants attend to Miss Gruchette?'
'Well, to tell the truth, m'm, the servants do almost all of it.
Still, that's what Miss Gruchette is here for. Would you like to see the house? It is pretty.' The woman spoke with hesitation, as if in doubt between the desire of earning a shilling and the fear that Ethelberta was not a stranger. That Ethelberta was Lady Mountclere she plainly did not dream.
'I fear I can scarcely stay long enough; yet I will just look in,' said Ethelberta. And as soon as they had crossed the threshold she was glad of having done so.
The cottage internally may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. The front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages;French bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. The apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor's face and on closer examination express frivolity more distinctly than by words.
'Miss Gruchette is here to keep the fowls?' said Ethelberta, in a puzzled tone, after a survey.
'Yes. But they don't keep her.'
Ethelberta did not attempt to understand, and ceased to occupy her mind with the matter. They came from the cottage to the door, where she gave the woman a trifling sum, and turned to leave. But footsteps were at that moment to be heard beating among the leaves on the other side of the hollies, and Ethelberta waited till the walkers should have passed. The voices of two men reached herself and the woman as they stood. They were close to the house, yet screened from it by the holly-bushes, when one could be heard to say distinctly, as if with his face turned to the cottage--'Lady Mountclere gone for good?'
'I suppose so. Ha-ha! So come, so go.'
The speakers passed on, their backs becoming visible through the opening. They appeared to be woodmen.
'What Lady Mountclere do they mean?' said Ethelberta.
The woman blushed. 'They meant Miss Gruchette.'
'Oh--a nickname.'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
The woman whispered why in a story of about two minutes' length.
Ethelberta turned pale.
'Is she going to return?' she inquired, in a thin hard voice.
'Yes; next week. You know her, m'm?'
'No. I am a stranger.'
'So much the better. I may tell you, then, that an old tale is flying about the neighbourhood--that Lord Mountclere was privately married to another woman, at Knollsea, this morning early. Can it be true?'
'I believe it to be true.'
'And that she is of no family?'
'Of no family.'
'Indeed. Then the Lord only knows what will become of the poor thing. There will be murder between 'em.'
'Between whom?'
'Her and the lady who lives here. She won't budge an inch--not she!'
Ethelberta moved aside. A shade seemed to overspread the world, the sky, the trees, and the objects in the foreground. She kept her face away from the woman, and, whispering a reply to her Good-morning, passed through the hollies into the leaf-strewn path. As soon as she came to a large trunk she placed her hands against it and rested her face upon them. She drew herself lower down, lower, lower, till she crouched upon the leaves. 'Ay--'tis what father and Sol meant! O Heaven!' she whispered.
She soon arose, and went on her way to the house. Her fair features were firmly set, and she scarcely heeded the path in the concentration which had followed her paroxysm. When she reached the park proper she became aware of an excitement that was in progress there.
Ethelberta's absence had become unaccountable to Lord Mountclere, who could hardly permit her retirement from his sight for a minute.
But at first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour's desertion, unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives. Then he had inquired, searched, been alarmed: he had finally sent men-servants in all directions about the park to look for her. He feared she had fallen out of a window, down a well, or into the lake. The next stage of search was to have been drags and grapnels: but Ethelberta entered the house.
Lord Mountclere rushed forward to meet her, and such was her contrivance that he noticed no change. The searchers were called in, Ethelberta explaining that she had merely obeyed the wish of her brother in going out to meet him. Picotee, who had returned from her walk with Sol, was upstairs in one of the rooms which had been allotted to her. Ethelberta managed to run in there on her way upstairs to her own chamber.
'Picotee, put your things on again,' she said. 'You are the only friend I have in this house, and I want one badly. Go to Sol, and deliver this message to him--that I want to see him at once. You must overtake him, if you walk all the way to Anglebury. But the train does not leave till four, so that there is plenty of time.'
'What is the matter?' said Picotee. 'I cannot walk all the way.'
'I don't think you will have to do that--I hope not.'
'He is going to stop at Corvsgate to have a bit of lunch: I might overtake him there, if I must!'
