e, with prudence and with patience, endeavouring
to repair the damages which the Civil Wars had inflicted upon their
fortune; and murmuring a little when her plans of economy were
interrupted by the liberal hospitality, which was her husband's
principal expense, and to which he was attached, not only from his own
English heartiness of disposition, but from ideas of maintaining the
dignity of his ancestry--no less remarkable, according to the tradition
of their buttery, kitchen, and cellar, for the fat beeves which they
roasted, and the mighty ale which they brewed, than for their extensive
estates, and the number of their retainers.

The world, however, upon the whole, went happily and easily with
the worthy couple. Sir Geoffrey's debt to his neighbour Bridgenorth
continued, it is true, unabated; but he was the only creditor upon the
Martindale estate--all others being paid off. It would have been most
desirable that this encumbrance also should be cleared, and it was the
great object of Dame Margaret's economy to effect the discharge; for
although interest was regularly settled with Master Win-the-Fight, the
Chesterfield attorney, yet the principal sum, which was a large one,
might be called for at an inconvenient time. The man, too, was gloomy,
important, and mysterious, and always seemed as if he was thinking upon
his broken head in the churchyard of Martindale-cum-Moultrassie.

Dame Margaret sometimes transacted the necessary business with him in
person; and when he came to the Castle on these occasions, she thought
she saw a malicious and disobliging expression in his manner and
countenance. Yet his actual conduct was not only fair, but liberal;
for indulgence was given, in the way of delay of payment, whenever
circumstances rendered it necessary to the debtor to require it. It
seemed to Lady Peveril that the agent, in such cases, was acting under
the strict orders of his absent employer, concerning whose welfare she
could not help feeling a certain anxiety.

Shortly after the failure of the singular negotiation for attaining
peace by combat, which Peveril had attempted to open with Major
Bridgenorth, that gentleman left his seat of Moultrassie Hall in the
care of his old housekeeper, and departed, no one knew whither, having
in company with him his daughter Alice and Mrs. Deborah Debbitch, now
formally installed in all the duties of a governante; to these was added
the Reverend Master Solsgrace. For some time pu