As she promised, so she performed, and on the Sunday packed off
her household to the fair that was being held at Abingdon that
day, using insistence with the reluctant, and particularly with
one of her women, a Mrs. Oddingsell, who expressed herself
strongly against leaving her ladyship alone in that lonely house.
At length, however, the last of them was got off, and my lady was
left impatiently to await her secret visitor. It was late
afternoon when he arrived, accompanied by Nunweek, whom he left
to hold the horses under the chestnuts in the avenue. Himself he
reached the house across the garden, where the blighting hand of
autumn was already at work.
Within the porch he found her waiting, fretted by her impatience.
"It is very good in you to have come, Sir Richard," was her
gracious greeting.
"I am your ladyship's devoted servant," was his sufficient
answer, and he doffed his plumed bonnet, and bowed 1ow before
her. "We shall be private in your bower above stairs," he added.
"Why, we are private anywhere. I am all alone, as you desired."
"That is very wise--most wise," said he. "Will your ladyship lead
the way?"
So they went up that steep, spiral staircase, which had loomed so
prominently in the plans the ingenious scoundrel had evolved.
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