They overtook Peter Gladden on the heath, and Richard taking the mare from him bade him go forward and warn the Lady Letitia of his coming. When the man had gone, Jeffray drew the pistols from the holsters, shook out the priming, and handed them to Bess. They were light weapons of delicate make, the butts set in Damascened silver. The girl took them and put them in her gown above her girdle. “Be careful, Bess,” he said. She laughed, and her eyes grew very bright of a sudden. “You did not give me these in the dream,” she said. In another moment Richard was in the saddle cantering over the heath towards the Beacon Rock. The Lady Letitia had spent the whole of the previous day in meditation, suspecting shrewdly enough that her nephew had ridden over to Hardacre to make peace with the sweet Jilian. Of course Miss Hardacre would be kind to Richard, and in that arch young lady’s kindness, Aunt Letitia had foreseen her own discomfort. Now the dowager was not in the least inclined to abandon Rodenham, for her financial affairs were still in an embarrassed state. She had shut up her house in town for the winter, and was keeping her coach-horses and her three servants at Jeffray’s expense. Till late in the spring she had intended foraging for herself amid the Sussex woods, and it would be wickedly inconvenient for her to leave Rodenham at present. Hence the news of Richard’s accident had provided the astute old lady with an admirable opportunity for a reconciliation. She worked herself into quite a delirium of distress over the tidings, questioned Solomon Grimshaw in person, and soon wormed the truth from him as to how Richard had come by a broken head. The romance pleased Aunt Letitia prodigiously. She gave Solomon a guinea, one of poor Sugg’s ewe lambs, and bade him carry back her affectionate greetings to Squire Jeffray. She would have flown to him that very moment, only it was pitch dark, and the roads in such a state. “Gladden, Peter Gladden, have my coach—my own coach, Gladden—round at the door by nine. I must drive over and bring the poor boy home. God grant, Gladden, that he is not dangerously hurt. You must send one of the men over to Rookhurst to order Surgeon Stott to call at the priory to-morrow.”