The girl looked surprised. Peace spoke in such a mournful tone that she hardly knew what to make of him.
“Well,” he added, “if you won’t have anything to say to me, so be it――these things are hard to bear.”
“Get along, man,” exclaimed the girl. “What on earth are you talking about? Are you daft? I’ll go my way and you go yours.”
“So be it, then, but you’ll bring me the picture to frame. I have another and a better one for you, remember that. Good evening――good-bye, Nell.”
“You’ve got my name pat enough. Good night.”
She held out her hand, Peace grasped it with ardour, and again bade her good-bye.
She passed through the lane with rapid steps――he watched her as she proceeded along.
When she had gone a couple of hundred yards or so, he followed at a respectful distance.
“She’s a charming creature, so impulsive――so ingenuous, but I wont bother her any more just now. She’s a little nettled, but she’ll come to, I don’t doubt that. She’s not one to bear malice, or to sulk either, if I read her character rightly.”
He let her go her way, and turned out of the lane into a bridle road which ran at right angles with it.
At this time he had not the remotest idea as to who and what she was, but he knew there would not be much difficulty in ascertaining all about her, either from Bricket himself, or one of the frequenters of his house.
Peace walked about the locality for half an hour or more after the girl’s departure, and noted all the leading residences in the neighbourhood. Although but a village he had passed through, it was a long straggling one, and was more densely populated than he had first supposed.
He now returned and bent his steps in the direction of the “Carved Lion.”
When within a couple of hundred yards or so of that well-known “house of entertainment for man and beast” he was suddenly confronted by a powerful-looking rustic who sprang out of an adjacent copse.
The fellow was an ugly-looking customer, and the expression of his ill-favoured countenance denoted that he meant mischief.
“Well,” said our hero, “what might be your pleasure?”
“You be’s the man I ha’ bin a waitin’ and watchin’ for, and now I’ve got ’ee.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure; and pray, now that you have got me, as you are pleased to term it, what may be the nature of your business?”