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Updated: June 23, 2025
Jane Payland was about twenty-four years of age, tall, slim, and active. She had no pretensions to beauty; but was the sort of person who is generally called lady-like. This morning she went to the little lobby, in which the boy had been told to wait, indignant at the impertinence of anyone who could dare to intrude upon her mistress at such a time.
On the way between Lady Eversleigh's room and the lobby in the servants' offices, she had ample leisure to examine the letter. It was addressed "Mr. Brown, at the 'Hen and Chickens." It was sealed with a plain seal. Jane Payland was very well acquainted with the writing of her mistress, and she perceived at once that this letter was not directed in Lady Eversleigh's usual hand.
This was what the world said of Honoria Eversleigh; but if those who spoke of her could have possessed themselves of her secrets, they would have discovered something very different from that which they imagined. Lady Eversleigh left the castle in the early part of November accompanied only by her maid, Jane Payland. A strange time of the year in which to start for the Continent, people said.
But my thoughts were wandering, and I was unconscious of the progress of time. Good night!" Jane Payland took a respectful leave of her mistress, and departed, absorbed in thought. "Is she a good woman or a bad one?" she wondered, as she sat by the fire in her own comfortable apartment.
Our head-coachman warn't near enough to her to speak to her; and though he tried to catch her eye he couldn't catch it; but he'll take his Bible oath that the young woman he saw was Jane Payland, Lady Eversleigh's own maid. Now, that's rather a curious circumstance, is it not, Mr. Maunders?"
The boy handed her a dirty-looking letter, directed, in a bold clear hand, to Lady Eversleigh. "Who gave you this?" asked Jane Payland, looking at the dirty envelope with extreme disgust. "It was a tramp as give it me a tramp as I met in the village; and I'm to wait for an answer, please, and I'm to take it to him at the 'Hen and Chickens."
For the first half-hour after she read it, a blight seemed to fall upon her senses, and she sat still in her chair, stupefied; but when she rallied, her first impulse was to send for Andrew Larkspur, who was now nearly restored to his usual state of sound health. She rang the bell, and summoned Jane Payland. "There is a lawyer's clerk living in this house," she said; "Mr. Andrews.
And as to news, there ain't anymore news of her than if she and Miss Payland had gone off to the very wildest part of Africa, where, if you feel lonesome, and want company, your only choice lies between tigers and rattlesnakes." "Never mind Africa! What was it that you were going to say about your lady?"
As she did so, she saw a man approaching, dressed like a countryman, in a clumsy frieze coat, and with his chin so muffled in a woollen scarf, and his felt hat drawn so low over his eyes, that there was nothing visible of him but the end of a long nose. That long, beak-like nose seemed strangely familiar to Miss Payland; and yet she could not tell where she had seen it before.
Maunders," remonstrated the groom. "I was on the point of telling you that our head-coachman had a holiday this Christmas; and where does he go but up to London, to see his friends, which live there; and while in London where does he go but to Drury Lane Theatre; and while coming out of Drury Lane Theatre who does he set his eyes on but Miss Payland, Lady Eversleigh's own maid, as large as life, and hanging on the arm of a respectable elderly man, which might be her father.
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