"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds."

In some respects, the pedler's anticipations were correct. Katherine had
"a bad time by herself" that night; for evil has this woful
prerogative,--it can wound the good and the innocent, it can make
wretched without provocation and without desert. But, whatever her
suffering, it was altogether her own. She made no complaint, and she
offered no explanation of her singular conduct. Her household, however,
had learned to trust her; and the men and women servants sitting around
the kitchen-fire that night, talked over the circumstance, and found its
very mystery a greater charm than any possible certainty, however
terrible, could have given them.

"She be a stout-hearted one," said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I
a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his
bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours;
and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes
a-shining like candles."

"It would be about the captain he spoke."

The remark was ventured by Lettice in a low voice, and the company
looked at each other and nodded confidentially. For the captain was a
person of great and mysterious importance in the house. All that was
done was in obedience to some order received from him. Katherine quoted
him continually, granted every favour in his name, made him the
authority for every change necessary. His visits were times of holiday,
when discipline was relaxed, and the methodical economy of life at the
manor house changed into festival. And Hyde had precisely that dashing
manner, that mixture of frankness and authority, which dependents
admire. The one place in the whole world where nobody would have
believed wrong of Hyde was in Hyde's own home.