Richard Yorke, as the keeper had hinted, was a very handsome lad—­brown-cheeked, blue eyed, and with rich clustering hair as black as a sloe; but at this moment he did not look prepossessing.  He frowned and flashed a furious glance upon the speaker; but old Grange, who had an eye like a hawk, for the objects that a hawk desires, was as blind as a mole to any evidence of human emotion short of a punch on the head, and went on unheeding: 

“Well, I thought you must ha’ heard o’ that too.  We folk down here heard o’ nothing else for all that year.  She got hold o’ Squire, this ere woman did, though he was but a school-boy, and she old enough to be his mother, bless ye, and was married to him.  And they kep’ it secret for six months; and that’s what bangs me most about it all.  For Carew, he can keep nothing secret—­nothing:  he blurts all out; and that’s why he seems so much worse than he is to some people.  Oh, she must have been a deep one, she must!”

“You never saw her, then?” asked Yorke, carelessly shading his eyes, as though from the westering sun, which Midas-like, was turning every thing it touched in that broad landscape into gold.

“Oh yes, I see her; she was here with Squire near half a year.  Mrs. Carew—­the old lady, I mean—­was at Crompton then; and the young one—­though she was no chicken neither—­she tried to get her turned out; but she wasn’t clever enough, clever as she was, for that job.  Carew loved his mother, as indeed he ought, for she had never denied him any thing since he was born; and so, in that pitched battle between the women, he took his mother’s side.  And in the end the old lady took his, and with a vengeance.  I do think that if it had not been for her, young madam would have held on—­Why, what’s the matter, young gentleman?  That was an oath fit for the mouth of Squire hisself.”

“It’s this cursed toothache,” exclaimed Yorke, passionately.  “It has worried me so ever since you began to speak that I should have gone mad if I had not let out at it a bit.  Never mind me; I’m better now.”

“Well, that’s like the Squire again,” returned the keeper, admiringly.  “He seems allus to find hisself better for letting out at things, and at people too, for the matter of that.  To hear him sometimes, one would almost think the ground must open; not that he means any harm, but it’s a way he’s got; but it does frighten them as is not used to him, surely.  I mind that day when he first took the fox-hounds out, and Mr. Howard the sheriff as was that year—­he’s dead and gone long since, and his grandson is sheriff now again, which is cur’ous—­well, he happened to ride a bit too forward with the dogs, and our young master—­Oh dear, dear,” and the old man began to chuckle like a hen that has laid two eggs at a time, “how he did swear at the old man!”

“You were talking about Mrs. Carew the elder,” observed the artist, coolly.