The terrible bolt at length slid back in the lock, gently, yet with tearing sound; mistress Watson entered, stood, stared. Before her sat Dorothy by the side of the bedstead, in her dressing-gown, her hair about her neck, her face like the moon at sunrise, and her eyelids red and swollen with weeping. She stood speechless, staring first at the disconsolate maiden, and then at the disorder of the room. The prisoner was nowhere. What her thoughts were, I must only imagine. That she should stare and be bewildered, finding Dorothy where she had left Richard, was at least natural.
The moment Dorothy found herself face to face with her doom, her presence of mind returned. The blood rushed from her heart to her brain. She rose, and ere the astonished matron, who stood before her erect, high-nosed, and open-mouthed like Michael Angelo’s Clotho, could find utterance, said,
’Mistress Watson, I swear to you by the soul of my mother, that although all seeming is against me, W—’
‘Where is the young rebel?’ interrupted mistress Watson sternly.
‘I know not,’ answered Dorothy. ’When first I entered the chamber, he had already gone.’
‘And what then hadst thou to do entering it?’ asked the housekeeper, in a tone that did Dorothy good by angering her.
Mistress Watson was a kind soul in reality, but few natures can resist the debasing influence of a sudden sense of superiority. Besides, was not the young gentlewoman in great wrong, and therefore before her must she not personify an awful Purity?
‘That I will tell to none but my lord marquis,’ answered Dorothy, with sudden resolve.
‘Oh, by all means, mistress! but an’ thou think to lead him by the nose while I be in Raglan,—’
’Shall I inform his lordship in what high opinion his housekeeper holds him?’ said Dorothy. ‘It seems to me he will hardly savour it.’
’It would be an ill turn to do me, but my lord marquis did never heed a tale-bearer.’