"Oh, are you?" said Grace; "how exceedingly lucky! I can show you exactly where to find it; if only you could manage to come to-morrow."
"To-morrow? Let me see--to-morrow! Yes, I believe I have no engagements. But will you not be afraid--I mean--after that blackguard's behaviour to-day? Not, of course, that he should be thought of twice--but still--oh, I never can express myself."
"I understand every word you would say," the young lady answered decisively; "and I never mean to wander so far again. Still, when I know that you are botanising; or rather, I mean when a gentleman is near--but I also can never express myself. You never must come--oh, I mean--good-bye! But I feel that you ought to be careful, because that bad man may lie in wait for you."
That evening Grace made one more trial to procure a little comfort in her own affairs. In the dark low parlour of the cottage, where she had lived for the last three months, with only Miss Patch and a deaf old woman for company and comfort, she sat by the fire and stitched hard, to abide her opportunity. At the corner of the table sat the good Miss Patch, with her spectacles on, and occasionally nodding over her favourite author, Ezekiel.
It was impossible for anybody to look at Miss Patch, and believe in anything against her high integrity. That lofty nose, and hard-set mouth, and the fine abstracted yet benevolent gaze of those hollow grey eyes, were enough to show that here was a lady of strict moral principle and high sense of duty. Incorruptible and grandly honest, but prickly as a hedgehog with prejudice, she could not be driven into any evil course, and required no leading into what she thought the right one. And the right course to her was always the simplest of all things to discover. Because it was that which led most directly to the glory of God at the expense of man. Anything that would smite down pride, and overthrow earthly schemes, and abase the creature before the Creator--that to her mind was the thing commanded; and if it combined therewith a cut at "papal arrogance," and priestly influence, then the command was as delightful as it was imperative.
This tall and very clear-minded lady was, by an in and out sort of way, related to Squire Oglander. She called him her "brother;" and the Squire once (to comfort her in a vile toothache) had gone so far as to call her his "sister." Still that, to his mind, was a piece of flattery, not to be remembered when the tooth was stopped;--from no pride on his part; but because of his ever-abiding execration of her father--the well-known Captain Patch.