“Your attendance upon her has been too much for you.You do not look well.Oh that I had been with you!You have had every care and anxiety upon yourself alone.”
“He meant I believe,”replied Jane,“to go to Epsom,the place where they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if anything could be made out from them.His principal object must be to discover the number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham.It had come with a fare from London;and as he thought that the circumstance of a gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another might be remarked he meant to make inquiries at Clapham.If he could anyhow discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare,he determined to make inquiries there,and hoped it might not be impossible to find out the stand and number of the coach.I do not know of any other designs that he had formed;but he was in such a hurry to be gone,and his spirits so greatly discomposed,that I had difficulty in finding out even so much as this.”
“Perhaps it would have been better,”replied her sister.
“I never saw anyone so shocked.He could not speak a word for full ten minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in such confusion!”