Читать книгу Beauchamp; or, The Error - G. P. R. James - Страница 11

The reader may remember that we left a lady and her daughter, whom Ned Hayward afterwards discovered to be a Mrs. and Miss Clifford, standing at the door of Sir John Slingsby's house, in the heart of what was called Tarningham Park. All that Ned Hayward (or the reader either) knew of their history at the moment that he quitted them, after having assisted them to alight from their carriage, was as follows: that the elder lady had been sent for to see her elder brother in his last moments, he having been accused of having gout in the stomach, and that she and her daughter had been stopped on the king's highway by three personages, two of whom, at least, had pistols with them, that they had been rescued by Captain Hayward himself, and another gentleman, that on arriving at Tarningham House it did not look at all like the dwelling of a dying man, and that the answer of the butler to Mrs. Clifford's inquiries regarding her brother's health was, "Quite well, thank you Ma'am," delivered in the most commonplace tone in the world.

At the precise point of time when this reply was made, Ned Hayward took his leave, remounted his horse, and rode back to Tarningham, and after he was gone Mrs. Clifford remained for at least thirty seconds somewhat bewildered with what seemed to her a very strange announcement. When she had done being bewildered, and seemed to have got a slight glimpse of the real state of the case, she turned an anxious glance to her daughter, to which Miss Clifford, who fully understood what it meant, replied at once, without requiring to have it put into words, "You had better go in, dear mamma," she said, "it will grieve poor Isabella if you do not, and besides, it might be risking a great deal to go back at night with nobody to protect us."