"Dame!" said Ryder, sternly, "I have got news of him."
"News of him?" faltered Mrs. Gaunt. "Bad news?"
"I don't know whether to tell you or not," said Ryder, sulkily, but with a touch of human feeling.
"What cannot I bear? What have I not borne? Tell me the truth."
The words were stout, but she trembled all over in uttering them.
"Well, it is as I said, only worse. Dame, he has got a wife and child in another county; and no doubt been deceiving her, as he has us."
"A wife!" gasped Mrs. Gaunt, and one white hand clutched her bosom, and the other the mantel-piece.
"Ay, Thomas Leicester, that is in the kitchen now, saw her, and saw his picture hanging aside hers on the wall. And he goes by the name of Thomas Leicester. That was what made Tom go into the inn, seeing his own name on the signboard. Nay, Dame, never give way like that. Lean on me,—so. He is a villain,—a false, jealous, double-faced villain."
Mrs. Gaunt's head fell back on Ryder's shoulder, and she said no word; but only moaned and moaned, and her white teeth clicked convulsively together.
Ryder wept over her sad state: the tears were half impulse, half crocodile.
She applied hartshorn to the sufferer's nostrils, and tried to rouse her mind by exciting her anger. But all was in vain. There hung the betrayed wife, pale, crushed, and quivering under the cruel blow.
Ryder asked her if she should go down and excuse her to her guests.
She nodded a feeble assent.
Ryder then laid her down on the bed with her head low, and was just about to leave her on that errand, when hurried steps were heard outside the door; and one of the female servants knocked; and, not waiting to be invited, put her head in, and cried, "O, Dame, the Master is come home. He is in the kitchen."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Mrs. Ryder made an agitated motion with her hand, and gave the girl such a look withal, that she retired precipitately.
But Mrs. Gaunt had caught the words, and they literally transformed her. She sprang off the bed, and stood erect, and looked a Saxon Pythoness: golden hair streaming down her back, and gray eyes gleaming with fury.
She caught up a little ivory-handled knife, and held it above her head.
"I'll drive this into his heart before them all," she cried, "and tell them the reason afterwards."
Ryder looked at her for a moment in utter terror. She saw a woman with grander passions than herself; a woman that looked quite capable of executing her sanguinary threat. Ryder made no more ado, but slipped out directly to prevent a meeting that might be attended with terrible consequences.
She found her master in the kitchen, splashed with mud, drinking a horn of ale after his ride, and looking rather troubled and anxious; and, by the keen eye of her sex, she saw that the female servants were also in considerable anxiety. The fact is, they had just extemporized a lie.
Tom Leicester, being near the kitchen window, had seen Griffith ride into the court-yard.
At sight of that well-known figure, he drew back, and his heart quaked at his own imprudence, in confiding Griffith's secret to Caroline Ryder.
"Lasses," said he, hastily, "do me a kindness for old acquaintance. Here's the Squire. For Heaven's sake, don't let him know I am in the house, or there will be bloodshed between us. He is a hasty man, and I'm another. I'll tell ye more by and by."
The next moment Griffith's tread was heard approaching the very door, and Leicester darted into the housekeeper's room, and hid in a cupboard there.
