Dorcas had led the way into the best kitchen, as charming a room as best kitchens used to be in farmhouses which had no parlours—­the fire reflected in a bright row of pewter plates and dishes; the sand-scoured deal tables so clean you longed to stroke them; the salt-coffer in one chimney-corner, and a three-cornered chair in the other, the walls behind handsomely tapestried with flitches of bacon, and the ceiling ornamented with pendent hams.

‘Sit ye down, sir—­do,’ said Dorcas, moving the three-cornered chair, ‘an’ let me get you somethin’ after your long journey.  Here, Becky, come an’ tek the baby.’

Becky, a red-armed damsel, emerged from the adjoining back-kitchen, and possessed herself of baby, whose feelings or fat made him conveniently apathetic under the transference.

’What’ll you please to tek, sir, as I can give you?  I’ll get you a rasher o’ bacon i’ no time, an’ I’ve got some tea, or be-like you’d tek a glass o’ rum-an’-water.  I know we’ve got nothin’ as you’re used t’ eat and drink; but such as I hev, sir, I shall be proud to give you.’

’Thank you, Dorcas; I can’t eat or drink anything.  I’m not hungry or tired.  Let us talk about Tina.  Has she spoken at all?’

‘Niver since the fust words.  “Dear Dorkis,” says she, “tek me in;” an’ then went off into a faint, an’ not a word has she spoken since.  I get her t’ eat little bits an’ sups o’ things, but she teks no notice o’ nothin’.  I’ve took up Bessie wi’ me now an’ then’—­here Dorcas lifted to her lap a curly-headed little girl of three, who was twisting a corner of her mother’s apron, and opening round eyes at the gentleman—­’folks’ll tek notice o’ children sometimes when they won’t o’ nothin’ else.  An’ we gathered the autumn crocuses out o’ th’ orchard, and Bessie carried ’em up in her hand, an’ put ’em on the bed.  I knowed how fond Miss Tina was o’ flowers an’ them things, when she was a little un.  But she looked at Bessie an’ the flowers just the same as if she didn’t see ’em.  It cuts me to th’ heart to look at them eyes o’ hers; I think they’re bigger nor iver, an’ they look like my poor baby’s as died, when it got so thin—­O dear, its little hands you could see thro’ ’em.  But I’ve great hopes if she was to see you, sir, as come from the Manor, it might bring back her mind, like.’

Maynard had that hope too, but he felt cold mists of fear gathering round him after the few bright warm hours of joyful confidence which had passed since he first heard that Caterina was alive.  The thought would urge itself upon him that her mind and body might never recover the strain that had been put upon them—­that her delicate thread of life had already nearly spun itself out.

’Go now, Dorcas, and see how she is, but don’t say anything about my being here.  Perhaps it would be better for me to wait till daylight before I see her, and yet it would be very hard to pass another night in this way.’