stable-yard.
Old Joe and his boy had gone away to breakfast: he lived in the village.
This was unlucky: Catherine must wait his return and lose time, or else saddle the horse herself. She chose the latter. The piebald was a good horse, but a fidgety one; so she saddled and bridled him at his stall. She then led him out to the stone steps in the stable-yard, and tried to mount him. But he sidled away; she had nobody to square him; and she could get nothing to mount but his head. She coaxed him, she tickled him on the other side with her whip. It was all in vain.
It was absurd, but heart-sickening. She stared at him with wonder that he could be so cruel as to play the fool when every minute might be life or death. She spoke to him, she implored him piteously; she patted him. All was in vain.
As a last resource she walked him back to the stable and gave him a sieveful of oats, and set it down by the corn bin for him, and took an opportunity to mount the bin softly.
He ate the oats, but with retroverted eye watched her. She kept quiet and affected nonchalance till he became less cautious: then suddenly sprang on him, and taught him to set his wit against a woman's. My lord wheeled round directly ere she could get her leg over the pommel; and made for the stable door. She lowered her head to his mane and just scraped out without injury; not an inch to spare. He set off at once; but luckily for her she had often ridden a bare-backed horse. She sat him for the first few yards by balance; then reined him in quietly, and soon whipped her left foot into the stirrup and her right leg over the pommel; and then the piebald nag had to pay for his pranks: the roads were clogged with snow, but she fanned him along without mercy, and never drew bridle till she pulled him up drenched, and steaming like a wash-tub, at Netley crossroads.
Here she halted irresolute: the road to the right led to Bolton, distant two miles and a half. The road in front led to Neville's Court, distant three miles. Which should she take? She had asked herself this a dozen times upon the road; yet could never decide until she got to the place, and must. The question was, with which of them had she most influence? She hardly knew; but Griffith Gaunt was her old sweetheart; it seemed somewhat less strange and indelicate to go to him than to the new one: so she turned her horse's head towards Bolton; but she no longer went quite so fast as she had gone before she felt going to either in particular. Such is the female mind.
She reached Bolton at half-past eleven; and now she was there, put a bold face on it; rode up to the door, and, leaning forward on her horse, rang the hall bell.
A footman came to the door.
With composed visage though beating heart, she told him she desired to speak for a moment to Mr. Griffith Gaunt. He asked her would she be pleased to alight: and it was clear by his manner no calamity had yet fallen. "No, no," said Kate, "let me speak to him here."
The servant went in to tell his master. Kate sat quiet with her heart still beating, but glowing now with joy: she was in time then, thanks to her good horse. She patted him, and made the prettiest excuses aloud to him for riding him so hard through the snow.
The footman came back to say that Mr. Gaunt had gone out.
"Gone out? Whither? On horseback?"
The footman did not know, but would ask within.
While he was gone to inquire, Catherine lost patience, and rode into the stable-yard, and asked a young lout who was lounging there whether his master was gone out on horseback.
The lounging youth took the trouble to call out the groom, and asked him.
The groom said "No," and that Mr. Gaunt was somewhere about the grounds he thought.
But in the midst of this colloquy one of the maids, curious to see the lady, came out by the kitchen door and curtsied to Kate, and told her Mr. Gaunt was gone out walking with two other gentlemen. In the midst of her discourse she recognized the visitor, and having somehow imbibed the notion that Miss Peyton was likely to be Mrs. Gaunt, and govern Bolton Hall, decided to curry favor with her; so she called her my lady, and was very communicative. She said one of the gentlemen was strange to her; but the other was Doctor Islip from Stanhope town. She knew him well: he had taken off her own brother's leg in a jiffy. "But, dear heart, Mistress," said she, "how pale you be. Do come in and have a morsel of meat, and a horn of ale."
"Nay, my good girl," said Kate; "I could not eat; but bring me a mug of new milk if you will. I have not broken my fast this day."
The maid bustled in, and Catherine asked the groom if there were no means of knowing where Mr. Gaunt was. The groom and the boy scratched their heads and looked puzzled. The lounging lout looked at their perplexity, and grinned satirically.
This youth was Tom Leicester, born in wedlock, and therefore in the law's eye son of old Simon Leicester; but gossips said his true father was the late Captain Gaunt. Tom ran with the hounds for his own sport: went out shooting with gentlemen and belabored the briars for them at two-pence per day and his dinner, and abhorred all that sober men call work.
By trade, a Beater: profession, a Scamp.
Two maids came out together now; one with the milk and a roll, the other with a letter. Catherine drank the milk but could not eat. Then says the other maid, "If so be you are Mistress Peyton, why this letter is for you: Master left it on his table in his bedroom."
Kate took the letter and opened it, all in a flutter. It ran thus:—
"Sweet Mistress,—When this reaches you, I shall be no more here to trouble you with my jealousy. This Neville set it abroad that you had changed horses with him, as much as to say you had plighted troth with him. He is a liar, and I told him so to his teeth. We are to meet at noon this day: and one must die. Methinks I shall be the one. But, come what may, I have taken care of thee; ask Jack Houseman else. But, oh dear Kate, think of all that hath passed between us, and do not wed this Neville, or I could not rest in my grave. Sweetheart, many a letter have I written thee, but none so sad as this. Let the grave hide my faults from thy memory; think only that I loved thee well. I leave thee my substance; would it were ten times more; and the last thought of my heart.
"So no more in this world,
"From him that is thy true lover
"And humble servant till death,
Griffith Gaunt."
There seems to be room in the mind for only one violent emotion at one instant of time. This touching letter did not just then draw a tear from her who now received it some hours sooner than the writer intended. Its first effect was to paralyze her. She sat white and trembling, and her great eyes filled with horror. Then she began to scream wildly for help. The men and women came round her.
"Murder! Murder!" she shrieked. "Tell me where to find him, ye wretches, or may his blood be on your heads!"
The scamp bounded from his lounging position and stood before her straight as an arrow. "FOLLOW ME," he shouted. Her grey eyes and the scamp's black ones, flashed into one another directly. He dashed out of the yard without another word.
And she spurred her horse, and clattered out after him.
He ran as fast as her horse could canter, and soon took her all round the house: and, while he ran, his black, gipsy eyes were glancing in every direction.
When they got to the lawn at the back of the house, he halted a moment, and said quietly, "Here they be." He pointed to some enormous footsteps in the snow, and bade her notice that
