“I had better not appear, love,” said Jane; “no ladies are coming, and among so many gentlemen my presence might be awkward.”

“By no means,” replied the husband.  “It wouldn’t be right, Mr Peeper, for my wife to be absent from the supper-table?”

“Certainly not.  It is to see her the neighbours are coming.”

Is this Mr Peeper to have the control of all my actions? thought Jane.  Who can he be?

She took another glance at the object of her thoughts, but caught his eye fixed on her with the same penetrating brightness as before; and she cast her looks on the ground; and, whether from anger or fear, she felt her cheeks glowing with blushes.

“You will not be long gone, if you please,” he said to Jane as she retired to change her dress.

“You don’t seem pleased to see us, Mr Peeper,” said Reginald, when Jane had gone to her room under the guidance of a very tall old woman, who walked before her, holding out a tremendously long candle, as if it were a sword, and she was at the head of a military procession.

“No, sir,” replied Mr Peeper; “I am not pleased with the person you have brought here.  You have gone too far from home for a wife.  None of the Belfronts have ever married out of Yorkshire, and it may give rise to troubles.”

“I am very sorry my wife’s relations would not allow me to send for you to perform the ceremony.”

“It is a bad omen,” said the old man; “my predecessors have married your predecessors without a break since the conquest.  It bodes no good.”

“I trust no harm will happen, and that you will soon forget the disappointment.”

“None of my family forget, but we will not talk of it.”  So saying, he turned away, and arranged a goodly array of bottles on the sideboard.  Reginald sat down on an oak chair beside the fire, and gazed attentively into the log.

In the mean time, Jane had followed her gigantic conductor through half a mile of passages, and reached a small room at one end of the quadrangle, and through the window (of which half the panes were broken, as if on purpose) she caught the melodious murmur of a rapid river, that chafed against the foundation walls of the castle.  On looking round, the prospect was not very encouraging.  Tattered tapestries hung down the walls, and waved in a most melancholy and ghost-like fashion in the wind; the floor was thinly littered over with some plaited rushes, to supply the place of a carpet; and a few long high-backed oak chairs kept guard against the wall.  The fire had died an infant in its iron cradle, the grate; and the curtain of the bed waved to and fro in mournful sympathy with the tapestry round the room.  Jane was so cold that she could hardly go through her toilette, simple as it was; but having at last achieved a very slight alteration in her dress, and left her bonnet on the head of an owl, which formed the ornament of one of the high-backed chairs, she endeavoured to retrace her steps; and after a few pauses and mistakes, she found her way once more into the hall.