She rose from her knees and said:  ‘Now, please, give me the letter.’

He was entreated to excuse her for consigning him to firelight when she left the room.

Danvers brought in a dismal tallow candle, remarking that her mistress had not expected visitors:  her mistress had nothing but tea and bread and butter to offer him.  Danvers uttered no complaint of her sufferings; happy in being the picture of them.  ‘I’m not hungry,’ said he.

A plate of Andrew Hedger’s own would not have tempted him.  The foolish frizzle of bacon sang in his ears as he walked from end to end of the room; an illusion of his fancy pricked by a frost-edged appetite.  But the anticipated contest with Diana checked and numbed the craving.

Was Warwick a man to proceed to extremities on a mad suspicion?—­What kind of proof had he?

Redworth summoned the portrait of Mr. Warwick before him, and beheld a sweeping of close eyes in cloud, a long upper lip in cloud; the rest of him was all cloud.  As usual with these conjurations of a face, the index of the nature conceived by him displayed itself, and no more; but he took it for the whole physiognomy, and pronounced of the husband thus delineated, that those close eyes of the long upper lip would both suspect and proceed madly.

He was invited by Danvers to enter the dining-room.

There Diana joined him.

’The best of a dinner on bread and butter is, that one is ready for supper soon after it,’ she said, swimming to the tea-tray.  ’You have dined?’

‘At the inn,’ he replied.

’The Three Ravens!  When my father’s guests from London flooded The Crossways, The Three Ravens provided the overflow with beds.  On nights like this I have got up and scraped the frost from my window-panes to see them step into the old fly, singing some song of his.  The inn had a good reputation for hospitality in those days.  I hope they treated you well?’

‘Excellently,’ said Redworth, taking an enormous mouthful, while his heart sank to see that she who smiled to encourage his eating had been weeping.  But she also consumed her bread and butter.

’That poor maid of mine is an instance of a woman able to do things against the grain,’ she said.  ’Danvers is a foster-child of luxury.  She loves it; great houses, plentiful meals, and the crowd of twinkling footmen’s calves.  Yet you see her here in a desolate house, consenting to cold, and I know not what, terrors of ghosts! poor soul.  I have some mysterious attraction for her.  She would not let me come alone.  I should have had to hire some old Storling grannam, or retain the tattling keepers of the house.  She loves her native country too, and disdains the foreigner.  My tea you may trust.’

Redworth had not a doubt of it.  He was becoming a tea-taster.  The merit of warmth pertained to the beverage.  ’I think you get your tea from Scoppin’s, in the City,’ he said.