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But Bess played a fine stroke. She sent for her rival on the Friday, and Henrietta, twenty-four hours betrothed, and very far from unhappy, took that road once more, and went to her.
"I saved you," said Bess, with coolness. "Yes, I did. Don't deny it!
Now do you save me."
And Henrietta moved heaven and earth and Anthony Clyne to save her.
She succeeded. Bess went abroad--to join Walterson, it was rumoured.
If so, she returned without him, for on the old miser's death she appeared on Windermere, sold Starvecrow Farm and all its belongings, and removed to the south, but to what part is not known, nor are any particulars of her later fortunes within reach. Some said that she played a part in the great riots at Bristol twelve years later, but the evidence is inconclusive, and dark women possessing a strain of gipsy blood are not uncommon.
Nor are women with a sharp tongue and a warm heart. Yet when Mrs.
Gilson died in the year of those very riots, and at a good age, there was a gathering to bury her in Troutbeck graveyard as great as if she had been a Lowther. The procession, horse and foot, was a mile long.
And when those who knew her least wondered whence all these moist eyes and this flocking to do honour to a woman who had been quick of temper and rough of tongue--ay, were it to Squire Bolton of Storrs, or the rich Mr. Rogers himself--there was one who came a great distance to the burying who could have solved the riddle.
It was Henrietta.
THE END
