The Earl broke off, bowed to her, and saw that
she was provided, breaking into his conversation with the Baron,
evidently much to the impatience of the latter; and again the polite
noble came down to the door with her, and placed her on her palfrey,
bidding her a kind farewell ere she rode away with her father. It
would be long before she met with such courtesy again. Her father
called to his side his old, rugged-looking esquire Cuthbert Ridley,
and began discussing with him what Lord Warwick had said, both wholly
absorbed in the subject, and paying no attention to the girl who rode
by the Baron's side, so that it was well that her old infantine
training in horsemanship had come back to her.
She remembered Cuthbert Ridley, who had carried her about and petted
her long ago, and, to her surprise, looked no older than he had done
in those days when he had seemed to her infinitely aged. Indeed it
was to him, far more than to her father, that she owed any attention
or care taken of her on the journey. Her father was not unkind, but
never seemed to recollect that she needed any more care than his
rough followers, and once or twice he and all his people rode off
headlong over the fell at sight of a stag roused by one of their
great deer-hounds. Then Cuthbert Ridley kept beside her, and when
the ground became too rough for a New Forest pony and a hand
unaccustomed to northern ground, he drew up.
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