“Lor, mistress, what a handsome coach, to be sure! And see the man servant on the horse behind. People of great fashion, I’ll warrant. And they’re coming to this very inn!”
Miss Foxwell watched listlessly till the vehicle—the private coach already mentioned as approaching the town from the North—had disappeared beneath the window from which she looked.
Foxwell had been standing at the empty fireplace, heedless of what might be seen in the street. He now spoke, carelessly:
“You saw the amiable gentleman who stood below, Georgiana, and who passed this door with so fairy-like a tread as I came up?”
“I didn’t observe him,” replied Georgiana. “Somebody passed very noisily.”
“The same. I thought you might remember him from the days before you left home. But, to be sure, you were a child then, and he, too, was younger. He is one of our neighbours, Squire Thornby.”
“I remember the name, but I don’t think I ever knew the gentleman.”
“If you never did, you lost little; and you’ll count it no great privilege when you do know him,—unless you have a tenderness for rustical boobies.”
Georgiana making no answer, the maid said to her in a lowered voice, “Lor, m’lady, your uncle had needs know _you_ better. _I_ saw the gentleman, and a ojus-looking man servant he had with him. I never could abide such bumpkin fellows.” The waiting-woman came from the town in which her mistress had received her education; she had been promoted to her present post from that of housemaid to Miss Foxwell’s aunt, and naturally she brought superior notions with her to the North.
Foxwell, wondering why the dinner had not arrived, went impatiently to the door. Steps were heard ascending the stairs, accompanied by the voices of women.
“The party from the private coach, being shown to a room,” whispered the maid to her mistress.
At that moment Foxwell, in the doorway, called out in pleased surprise, “Why, as I live—certainly it is! Lady Strange, upon my soul!—and Mrs. Winter! and Rashleigh!—George Rashleigh, or I’m a saint!”
He seized the hand of her whom he called Lady Strange, and kissed it with a gallant fervour; treated the other lady in like manner, and then threw his arms around the gentleman who was third and last of the newcomers (not counting two servants) in an embrace such as was the fashion at the time.