He saluted; under the suspicion of his patron’s lady his legs were hampered, he dared not approach her; though his innocence of a deed not proposed to him yet—­and all to stock that girl Madge’s shop, if done! knocked at his ribs with fury to vindicate himself before the lady and her maid.  A gentleman met them and conducted them across the hills.

And two Taffy gentlemen would hardly be sufficient for the purpose, supposing an ill-used Englishman inclined to block their way!—­What, and play footpad, Kit Ines?  No, it’s just a game in the head.  But a true man hates to feel himself suspected.  His refuge is the beer of the country.

Next day there were the two gentlemen to conduct the lady and her maid; and Taffy the first walks beside the countess; and that girl Madge trudges along with no other than my lord’s Mr. Woodseer, chattering like a watering-can on a garden-bed:  deuce a glance at Kit Ines.  How can she keep it up and the gentleman no more than nodding?  How does he enjoy playing second fiddle with the maid while Mr. tall brown-face Taffy violins it to her ladyship a stone’s throw in front?  Ines had less curiosity to know the object of Mr. Woodseer’s appearance on the scene.  Idle, unhandsomely treated, and a cave of the yawns, he merely commented on his observations.

‘Yes, there he is, don’t look at him,’ Madge said to Gower; ’and whatever he’s here for, he has a bad time of it, and rather more than it’s pleasant for him to think over, if a slave to a “paytron” thinks at all.  I won’t judge him; my mistress is bitten with the fear for the child, worse than ever.  And the earl, my lord, not coming, and he wanting her to move again, seems to her he durstn’t do it here and intends to snap at the child on the road.  She-’s forced to believe anything of such a husband and father.  And why does he behave so?  I can’t spell it.  He’s kind to my Sally—­you’ve seen the Piccadilly shop?—­because she was . . . she did her best in love and duty for my lady.  And behaves like a husband hating his wife’s life on earth!  Then he went down with good Mr. Woodseer, and called on Sally, pretending to inquire, after she was kidnapped by that Kit Ines acting to please his paytron, he must be shown up to the room where she slept, and stands at the door and peeps in, Sally’s letter says, and asks if he may enter the room.  He went to the window looking on the chimneys she used to see, and touched an ornament over the fireplace, called grandfather’s pigtail case—­he was a sailor; only a ridiculous piece of china, that made my lady laugh about the story of its holding a pigtail.  But he turns it over because she did—­Sally told him.  He couldn’t be pretending when he bought the beautiful shop and stocked it for Sally.  He gets her lots of customers; and no rent to pay till next Michaelmas a year.  She’s a made woman through him.  He said to her, he had heard from Mr. Woodseer the Countess of Fleetwood called her sister; he shook her hand.’