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You MIGHT say the landlady of the Falcon Hotel, since we are in for politeness. The people are ridiculous enough, but give them their due. The possibility is that Mrs. Smith was getting mollified, in spite of herself, by these remarkably friendly phenomena among the people of St. Launce's. And in justice to them it was quite desirable that she should do so.
It was impossible to say when his master might not return, and it might be as much as his life was worth to be caught in the house after he had been locked out of it. He begged permission to open the window, and make his escape back to the stables while there was still time. As he unbarred the shutter they were startled by a voice hailing them from below. It was Launce's voice calling to Natalie.
Richard Turlington's voice was suddenly audible on deck exactly above them. "Graybrooke, I want to say a word to you about Launcelot Linzie." Natalie's first impulse was to fly to the door. Hearing Launce's name on Richard's lips, she checked herself. Something in Richard's tone roused in her the curiosity which suspends fear. She waited, with her hand in Launce's hand.
Who, looking at it, could fail to revile the senseless modern fashion of dressing the hair, which hides the double beauty of form and color that nestles at the back of a woman's neck? From time to time, as the interview proceeded, Launce's lips emphasized the more important words occurring in his share of the conversation on the soft, fragrant skin which the lifted hair let him see at intervals.
They were safe in the corner of the room, on the same side as the door Sir Joseph, helpless as a child, in Launce's arms; the women pale, but admirably calm. "I hear you," cried the voice of the miscreant on the other side of the door. "I'll have you yet through the wall." There was a pause.
And the carriage rolled away towards St. Launce's. Out rushed Mrs. Smith from behind a laurel-bush, where she had stood pondering. 'Just going to touch my hat to her, said John; 'just for all the world as I would have to poor Lady Luxellian years ago. 'Lord! who is she? 'The public-house woman what's her name? Mrs. Mrs. at the Falcon. 'Public-house woman. The clumsiness of the Smith family!
It was Stephen's letter-day, and she was bound to meet the postman to stealthily do a deed she had never liked, to secure an end she now had ceased to desire. But she went. There were two letters. One was from the bank at St. Launce's, in which she had a small private deposit probably something about interest.
Under a perfectly-acted pretense of toying with it absently, in the character of a young lady absorbed in thought, she began dividing a morsel of ham left on the edge of her plate, into six tiny pieces. Launce's eye looked in sidelong expectation at the divided and subdivided ham.
Being a country girl, and a good, not to say a wild, horsewoman, it had been her delight to canter, without the ghost of an attendant, over the fourteen or sixteen miles of hard road intervening between their home and the station at St. Launce's, put up the horse, and go on the remainder of the distance by train, returning in the same manner in the evening.
'I can't think what's coming to these St. Launce's people at all at all. 'With their "How-d'ye-do's," do you mean? 'Ay, with their "How-d'ye-do's," and shaking of hands, asking me in, and tender inquiries for you, John. These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and his wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed Knight's departure from England.
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