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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Some who seem to be your friends are no friends to Mr. Crosby." "This is no friend to be afraid of," laughed Barbara. "Were you not told to seek a fiddler at Aylingford if you failed to find me? This is he!" "A fiddler!" Harriet exclaimed. She had evidently not expected the fiddler to be a man of this sort, and was not satisfied. Barbara turned to the window again. "Tell me what you fear, Martin.
"You will not tell me the price?" "When I know it, and that will be to-morrow. Come to-morrow afternoon, Martin, unless you are going back to Aylingford at once." "I shall come," he answered; but listen, mistress, there are more ways than one of helping Gilbert Crosby. Do not pay too high a price. I wish you would tell me with whom you are bargaining." "To-morrow, Martin, and until then "
It may be that Aylingford, lying in the depth of the country, away from the main road, escaped particular notice, and this might also account for the fact that it had never attracted the attention of Cromwell's men, which it reasonably might have done, seeing that the Lanisons were staunch for the King.
It was the day after this conversation with Judge Marriott that Martin Fairley came to see her for the second time since she had left Aylingford. To Barbara he seemed strangely out of place in town, the air he assumed of being exactly like other men ill-suited him, and he seemed at a loss without his bow and fiddle.
"He should be as easy to find as a cat in winter time. Cats always go towards the fire, you know, and blink the dreamy hours away in the warmth of the blaze. Oh, we'll find this Gilbert Crosby, never fear; and when we find him, what shall we say? Our Lady of Aylingford is in love. Come with us." "You are foolish, Martin."
"And around Aylingford I know of no men worth troubling about," said Barbara, "so it would seem that I am on the high road to dying a spinster." "Never was woman more unlikely to do that than you," answered Sir John. "When a young girl talks like that, an old campaigner like myself begins to wonder in which direction her heart has fluttered.
It was not difficult to believe in the legends which the simple country folk told of Aylingford, and they were many. Had some old monk come suddenly out of the wood, over the bridge, and walked in meditation along the terrace, he would hardly have looked strange or out of place so long as a bevy of Sir John's visitors had not chanced to meet him.
No, his niece did not expect him, nor Lady Bolsover either. His arrival was a surprise to both of them." "And to me," Martin answered; "but it is bad news. What brings him from Aylingford? Can Rosmore be in town?" "No, that is impossible," returned Fellowes. "He is busy with preparations for the assizes, and is in command of the military force placed at the disposal of Judge Jeffreys.
The coming of Harriet Payne to Aylingford had aroused Sir John's suspicions, but there was no circumstance which would lead Rosmore to suppose that she intended journeying to the West. Martin Fairley also troubled her. Had he made good his escape, or had he been retaken and confined somewhere else in the town?
His brother, who had gone abroad ready to serve where-ever there was fighting to be done, had also married. His wife died young, too, and her daughter Barbara had come as a child to Aylingford. She did not remember her father, who subsequently died in the East Indies, leaving his child and a great fortune to the care of Sir John.
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