lastly a gold locket and chain for Diana.







CHAPTER XXIX

TELLS OF AN OMINOUS MEETING

Precisely upon the stroke of half-past four I turned under the arch of
the "Chequers" inn and, coming into the yard, looked about for Diana.
The place was fairly a-throng with vehicles, farmers' gigs, carts,
curricles and the like; in one corner of the long penthouse I espied
the Tinker's cart with Diogenes champing philosophically at a truss of
hay, but Diana herself was nowhere to be seen. Therefore, having
deposited my parcel in the cart among divers other packages (which I
took to be the stores Jeremy had mentioned), I seated myself in a
remote and shady corner and glanced around. Horses munched and snorted
all about me, unseen hostlers hissed and whistled, and a man in a
smart livery hung upon the bridles of two horses harnessed to a
handsome closed travelling carriage, blood-horses that tossed proud
heads and stamped impatient hoofs, insomuch that the groom alternately
cursed and coaxed them, turning his head ever and anon to glance
towards a certain back door of the inn with impatient expectancy. And
thus it befell that I began to watch this door also and as the moments
elapsed there waked within me a strange and bodeful trembling
eagerness, a growing anxiety to behold what manner of person that door