"
Dame Joan of Waddington was the presiding genius of the feast, the
conduit-pipe through which flowed the full stream of daily bounty,
dispensing every blessing, even the most minute. In that golden age of
domestic discipline it was not beneath the dignity of a careful
housewife to attend and take the lead in all culinary arrangements.
The master strode to and fro in the hall, and Elizabeth was humming at
her wheel. He looked anxious and ill at ease, often casting a furtive
glance towards the entrance, and occasionally a side-look at his
daughter. She sometimes watched her father's eye, as though she had
caught his restless apprehensions, and would have inquired the cause of
his uneasiness. Suddenly a loud bay from a favourite hound that was
dozing on the hearth announced the approach of a stranger. Oliver
advanced with a quick step into the courtyard, and soon re-entered
leading in a middle-sized, middle-aged personage, slightly formed, whose
pale and saintly features looked haggard and apprehensive, while his eye
wavered to and fro, less perhaps with curiosity than suspicion.
He was wrapped in a grey cloak; and a leathern jerkin, barely meeting in
front, displayed a considerable breadth of under garment in the space
between hose and doublet.
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