Mr. Piggott blinked and guffawed. Next moment he spilled his wine, and squealed as the heel of Mr. Lot’s boot came crunching upon his toe under the table.
“Hallo, was that your foot, Tom? Beg pardon; I’ve got such infernal long legs.”
Mr. Piggott took the hint, mopped up the wine with a napkin, and relapsed into silence. He was one of the Hardacre toadies who swilled Sir Peter’s punch, swore in voluble admiration over Mr. Lot’s escapades, and always expressed himself ravished by Miss Jilian’s charms. Sir Peter had instructed his son as to the necessity for blanketing Richard’s sensitive soul. Hence, Mr. Lot, wise in his generation, had come to regard Jeffray as a prospective brother-in-law, a pretty bridegroom to be cherished for Miss Jilian’s sake. He might despise the youth himself, but it was not Sir Peter’s policy to suffer Richard to be frightened from Hardacre by his raw-boned and boisterous guests.
Richard did not see the fair Mistress Jilian that day. Cousin Lot announced to him, with a leer, that his sister was abed with a sick headache. Should he deliver a note to her from her dear cousin? It would do Jilian a world of good no doubt to get a glimpse of her cousin’s pretty sentences. Richard blushed, smiled, contented himself with sending his “sympathetic and cousinly respect” to the suffering angel. The truth was this, though Richard did not know it, Miss Hardacre had been trying some new cosmetic from town, and the treacherous stuff had blistered her fair cheeks. She was lying abed with a plaster of chalk and olive-oil over her face, and her sweet soul full of tempestuous indignation.
The snow was still lying an inch deep over the grass when Jeffray bowed over Sir Peter’s gnarled and gouty hand, smiled sheepishly at Lot, and mounted his mare for Rodenham. Mists were creeping up the valleys, rolling over the woods like smoke, wiping out the blues and purples of the distance with steaming vapor. The high ground by Beacon Rock was still clear, while below the mist seemed like a gray sea beating upon the dark coast-line of the moors. Here and there a tall clump of trees stood out like a black and isolated rock in the midst of the water.
Richard had passed Beacon Rock and was in the fringe of the fog when a shrill cry came to him from a thicket of pines known as the Queen’s Circle, standing on a knoll to the left of the road. He reined in to listen, the mist drifting about him in ragged eddies, raw and cold with the thawing snow. Richard could see the clump of trees towering dimly through the vapor. Angry voices came eddying over the moor. Jeffray could distinguish a woman’s above the growling of the deeper undertones.
