therefore a great ball was expected, and great doings upon his coming,
as it were, fresh to take possession of his ancestors' estate. I never
shall forget the day he came home: we had waited and waited all day long
till eleven o'clock at night, and I was thinking of sending the boy to
lock the gates, and giving them up for that night, when there came the
carriages thundering up to the great hall door. I got the first sight of
the bride; for when the carriage door opened, just as she had her foot
on the steps, I held the flam[S] full in her face to light her, at which
she shut her eyes, but I had a full view of the rest, of her, and
greatly shocked I was, for by that light she was little better than a
blackamoor, and seemed crippled, but that was only sitting so long in
the chariot. "You're kindly welcome to Castle Rackrent, my lady," says I
(recollecting who she was); "did your honour hear of the bonfires?" His
honour spoke never a word, nor so much as handed her up the steps--he
looked to me no more like himself than nothing at all; I know I took him
for the skeleton of his honour: I was not sure what to say next to one
or t'other, but seeing she was a stranger in a foreign country, I
thought it but right to speak cheerful to her, so I went back again to
the bonfires. "My lady," says I, as she crossed the hall, "there would
have been fifty times as many, but for fear of the horses, and
frightening your ladyship: Jason and I forbid them, please your honour."
With that she looked at me a little bewildered. "Will I have a fire
lighted in the state-room to-night?" was the next question I put to her,
but never a word she answered, so I concluded she could not speak a word
of English, and was from foreign parts. The short and the long of it
was, I couldn't tell what to make of her; so I left her to herself, and
went straight down to the servants' hall to learn something for certain
about her. Sir Kit's own man was tired, but the groom set him a talking
at last, and we had it all out before ever I closed my eyes that night.
The bride might well be a great fortune--she was a _Jewish_ by all