"Well--ay! _This?_--aw--you _brought_ it, didn't you?"
So the General broke it open--he had not his glasses with him--and, holding it far away, read a few lines with a dreadful glare, and then bursting all on a sudden into such a storm of oaths and curses as scared the sober walls of that unmilitary hostelry, he whirled his walking-stick in the air, with the fluttering letter extended toward the face of the astounded messenger, as if in another second he would sweep his head off.
At the sound of this hoarse screech the kitchen-wench looked open-mouthed out of the scullery-window with a plate dripping in her hand. "Boots," with his fist in a "Wellington," held his blacking-brush poised in air, and gazed also; and the hostler held the horse he was leading into the stable by the halter, and stood at the door gaping over his shoulder.
"Tell your master I said he may go to _hell_, sir," said the General, scrunching the letter like a snowball in his fist, and stamping in his fury.
What more he said I know not. The man withdrew, and, once or twice, turned about, sulkily, half puzzled and half angered, perhaps not quite sure whether he ought not to "lick" him.
"What'll be the matter now?" demanded the proprietress, looking from under her balustrade of brown ringlets from the back door.
"'Drat me if I know; he's a rum un, that he be," replied the man with the Marlowe button. "When master hears it he'll lay his whip across that old cove's shouthers, I'm thinking."
"I doubt he's not right in his head; he's bin a-walkin' up an' down the same way ever since he ordered the chaise, like a man beside himself. _Will_ ye put _them_ horses to?" she continued, raising her voice; "why, the 'arniss is on 'em this half-hour. Will ye put 'em to or _no_?" and so, in something of an angry panic, she urged on the preparations, and in a few minutes more General Lennox was clattering through the long street of the town, on his way to Slowton, and the London horrors of legal consultations, and the torture of the slow processes by which those whom God hath joined together are sundered.
"Send Donica Gwynn to me," said Lady Alice to the servant whom her bell had summoned to Lady Mary's boudoir.
"Shut the door, Donica Gwynn," said she, "and listen. Come a little nearer, please. Sir Jekyl Marlowe is ill, and, of course, we cannot all stay here." Lady Alice looked at her dubiously.