to the new one.
So she turned her horse's head towards Bolton; but she no longer went
quite so fast as she had gone before she felt going to either in
particular. Such is the female mind.

She reached Bolton at half-past eleven, and, now she was there, put a
bold face on it, rode up to the door, and, leaning forward on her horse,
rang the hall-bell.

A footman came to the door.

With composed visage, though beating heart, she told him she desired to
speak for a moment to Mr. Griffith Gaunt. He asked her, would she be
pleased to alight; and it was clear by his manner no calamity had yet
fallen.

"No, no," said Kate; "let me speak to him here."

The servant went in to tell his master. Kate sat quiet, with her heart
still beating, but glowing now with joy. She was in time, then, thanks
to her good horse. She patted him, and made the prettiest excuses aloud
to him for riding him so hard through the snow.

The footman came back to say that Mr. Gaunt had gone out.

"Gone out? Whither? On horseback?"

The footman did not know, but would ask within.

While he was gone to inquire, Catharine lost patience, and rode into the
stable-yard, and asked a young lout, who was lounging there, whether his
master was gone out on horseback.

The lounging youth took the trouble to call out the groom, and asked
him.

The groom said, "No," and that Mr. Gaunt was somewhere about the
grounds, he thought.

But in the midst of this colloquy, one of the maids, curious to see the
lady, came out by the kitchen-door, and curtsied to Kate, and told her
Mr. Gaunt was gone out walking with two other gentlemen. In the midst of
her discourse, she recognized the visitor, and, having somehow imbibed
the notion that Miss Peyton was likely to be Mrs. Gaunt, and govern
Bolton Hall, decided to curry favor with her; so she called her "My
Lady," and was very communicative. She said one of the gentlemen was
strange to her; but the other was Doctor Islip, from Stanhope town. She
knew him well: he had taken off her own brother's leg in a jiffy.

"But, dear heart, Mistress," said she, "how pale you be! Do come in, and
have a morsel of meat and a horn of ale."

"Nay, my good girl," said Kate; "I could not eat; but bring me a mug of
new milk, if you will. I have not broken my fast this day."

The maid bustled in, and Catharine asked the groom if there were no
means of knowing where Mr. Gaunt was. The groom and the boy scratched
their heads, and looke