She counted it a piece of information gained, and jumped to her seat,
bidding the driver start. To have pretty well lost her character for a
hero changed into a patron's dog, was a thought that outweighed the show
of incivility. Some little distance away, she reproached herself for
not having been so civil as to inquire what day my lord was expected,
by his appointment. The girl reflected on the strangeness of a body of
discontented miners bringing my lord and my lady close, perhaps to meet.




CHAPTER XXX

REBECCA WYTHAN

The earl was looked for at the, chief office of the mines, and each day
an expectation of him closed in disappointment, leaving it to be surmised
that there were more serious reasons for his continued absence during a
crisis than any discussed; whether indeed, as when a timepiece neglects
to strike the hour which is, by the reckoning of natural impatience,
past, the capital charge of 'crazy works' must not be brought against a
nobleman hitherto precise upon business, of a just disposition, fairly
humane. For though he was an absentee sucking the earth through a tube,
in Ottoman ease, he had never omitted the duty of personally attending on
the spot to grave cases under dispute. The son of the hardheaded father
came out at a crisis; and not too highhandedly: he could hear an opposite
argument to the end. Therefore, since he refused to comply without
hearing, he was wanted on the spot imperatively, now.