“O never mind supper, if I can only go to bed,” sighed Aurelia, sinking on the couch as the old woman hobbled off.  Lassitude and exhaustion had brought her to a state like annihilation—­unable to think or guess, hope or fear, with shoes hurting her footsore feet, a stiff dress cramping her too much for sleep, and her weary aching eyes gathering a few impressions in a passive way.  On the walls hung dimly seen portraits strangely familiar to her.  The man in a green dressing gown with floating hair had a face she knew; so had the lady in the yellow ruff.  And was that not the old crest, the Delavie butterfly, with the motto, Ma Vie et ma Mie, carved on the mantelpiece?  Thus she knew that she must be in Delavie House, and felt somewhat less desolate as she recognised several portraits as duplicates of those at the Great House at Carminster, and thought they looked at her in pity with their eyes like her father’s.  The youngest son in the great family group was, as she knew, an Amyas, and he put her in mind of her own.  Oh, was he her own, when she could not tell whether those great soft, dark-grey eyes that looked so kindly on her had descended to the young baronet?  She hoped not, for Harriet and she had often agreed that they presaged the fate of that gallant youth, who had been killed by Sir Bevil Grenville’s side.  He must have looked just as Sir Amyas did, lying senseless after the hurt she had caused.

No more definite nor useful thought passed through the brain of the overwearied maiden as she rest on the couch, how long she knew not; but it was growing dark by the time Madge returned with a guttering candle, a cracked plate and wedge of greasy-looking pie, a piece of dry bread, a pewter cup of small beer, and an impaired repulsive steel knife with a rounded end, and fork with broken prong.  The fact of this being steel was not distressing to one who had never seen a silver fork, but the condition of both made her shudder, and added to the sick sense of exhaustion that destroyed her appetite.  She took a little of the bread, and, being parched with thirst, drank some of the beer before Madge came back again.  “Oh ho, you’re nice I see, my fine Dame Really!”

“Thank you, indeed I can’t eat, I am so much tired,” said Aurelia apologetically.

“You’ll have to put up with what serves your betters, I can tell you,” was all the reply she received.  “Well be ye coming to your bed?”

So up the creaking stairs she was guided to a room, very unlike that fresh white bower at Bowstead, large, eerie, ghostly-looking, bare save for a dark oak chest, and a bed of the same material, the posts apparently absolute trees, squared and richly carved, and supporting a solid wooden canopy with an immense boss as big as a cabbage, and carved something like one, depending from the centre, as if to endanger the head of the unwary, who should start up in bed.  No means of ablution were provided, and Aurelia felt so grimed and dusty that she ventured to beg for an ewer and basin; but her amiable hostess snarled out that she had enough to do without humouring fiddle-faddle whimsies, and that she might wash at the pump if nothing else would serve her.