hospitality! Not if the choice lay betwixt that and my coffin!'
cried the cavalier.

'Then let me carry you back to lady Vaughan's,' said Richard, with a
torturing pang of jealousy, which only his sense of right, now
thoroughly roused, enabled him to defy.

'I dare not. I should terrify my mother, and perhaps kill my
cousin.'

'Your mother! your cousin!' cried Richard.

'Yes,' returned Scudamore; 'my mother is there, on a visit to her
cousin lady Vaughan.'

'Alas, I am more to blame than I knew!' said Richard.

'No,' Scudamore went on, heedless of Richard's lamentation. 'I must
crawl back to Raglan as I may. If I get there before the morning, I
shall be able to show reason why I should not wait upon my lord at
his breakfast.'

'You belong to the earl's household, then?' said Richard.

'Yes; and I fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything
else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would
he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a
squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but
his lordship will never be content without me to hand him his
buttered egg at breakfast, and fill his cup at dinner with his