Hence the news of Richard’s accident had provided the astute old lady with an admirable opportunity for a reconciliation. She worked herself into quite a delirium of distress over the tidings, questioned Solomon Grimshaw in person, and soon wormed the truth from him as to how Richard had come by a broken head. The romance pleased Aunt Letitia prodigiously. She gave Solomon a guinea, one of poor Sugg’s ewe lambs, and bade him carry back her affectionate greetings to Squire Jeffray. She would have flown to him that very moment, only it was pitch dark, and the roads in such a state. “Gladden, Peter Gladden, have my coach—my own coach, Gladden—round at the door by nine. I must drive over and bring the poor boy home. God grant, Gladden, that he is not dangerously hurt. You must send one of the men over to Rookhurst to order Surgeon Stott to call at the priory to-morrow.”
Aunt Letitia had dismounted from the coach that morning, and was hobbling up and down under the shadow of the Beacon Rock, while her fat horses steamed in the road. It was indeed an affecting sight to behold this goddess of powder and patches strutting with all the admirable anxiety of a “stage grandmother” on nature’s unartificial grass. The Lady Letitia was an evening, rather than a morning, star, for her physical frailties were unmasked by the sun. When Richard appeared riding over the heath, the dowager’s holy outburst of joy was an impressive sight to Peter Gladden and the lackey behind the coach. The old lady actually toddled forward to meet Richard, a ridiculous little straw hat perched on her powdered head, her ebony stick in one hand, a lace handkerchief in the other.
“My dear Richard—my dear Richard—I am overcome with thankfulness at seeing you so hearty.”
Jeffray, dismounting, kissed the Lady Letitia’s hand. He was touched by his aunt’s display of feeling, and it was not in him to remember a wrong.
“I am not much the worse, aunt,” he said, smiling, “but for a bandaged head.”
“It was such a shock to me last night, Richard,” quoth the lady, dabbing her eyes with her lace handkerchief, “for I said to myself, Richard: ‘perhaps the poor lad is dangerously hurt, and I cannot get to him before the morning.’ And I remembered that we had quarrelled the night before. Oh, my dear nephew, what a solemn thing is life; death is always near to us, and how inscrutable are the ways of the Almighty.”