Here she found three horses, one equipped with the pillion on which she was to ride behind a burly stableboy. The other two were mounted by a couple of stalwart and well-armed men, one of whom carried a funnel-mouthed musketoon with a swagger that promised prodigies of valour.
Wrapped in her cloak, she mounted behind the stable-boy, and bade him set out and take the road to Denham. Her dream was at an end.
Master Quinn, the landlord, watched her departure with eyes that were charged with doubt and concern. As he made fast the door of the stableyard after she had passed out, he ominously shook his hoary head and muttered to himself humble, hostelry-flavoured philosophies touching the strange ways of men with women, and the stranger ways of women with men. Then, taking up his lanthorn, he slowly retraced his steps to the buttery where his wife was awaiting him.
With sleeves rolled high above her pink and deeply-dimpled elbows stood Mistress Quinn at work upon the fashioning of a pastry, when her husband entered and set down his lanthorn with a sigh.
"To be so plagued," he growled. "To be browbeaten by a slip of a wench—a fine gentleman's baggage with the airs and vapours of a lady of quality. Am I not a fool to have endured it?"
"Certainly you are a fool," his wife agreed, kneading diligently, "whatever you may have endured. What now?"
His fat face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles. His little eyes gazed at her with long-suffering malice.
"You are my wife," he answered pregnantly, as who would say: Thus is my folly clearly proven! and seeing that the assertion was not one that admitted of dispute, Mistress Quinn was silent.
"Oh, 'tis ill done!" he broke out a moment later. "Shame on me for it; it is ill done!"
"If you have done it 'tis sure to be ill done, and shame on you in good sooth—but for what?" put in his wife.
"For sending those poor jaded beasts upon the road."
"What beasts?"
"What beasts? Do I keep turtles? My horses, woman."
"And whither have you sent them?"
"To Denham with the baggage that came hither this morning in the company of that very fierce gentleman who was in such a pet because we had no horses."
"Where is he?" inquired the hostess.
"At dice with those other gallants from town."
"At dice quotha? And she's gone, you say?" asked Mrs. Quinn, pausing in her labours squarely to face her husband.
"Aye," said he.
"Stupid!" rejoined his docile spouse, vexed by his laconic assent. "Do you mean she has run away?"
"Tis what anyone might take from what I have told you," he answered sweetly.
"And you have lent her horses and helped her to get away, and you leave her husband at play in there?"
"You have seen her marriage lines, I make no doubt," he sneered irrelevantly.
"You dolt! If the gentleman horsewhips you, you will have richly earned it."
"Eh? What?" gasped he, and his rubicund cheeks lost something of their high colour, for here was a possibility that had not entered into his calculations. But Mistress Quinn stayed not to answer him. Already she was making for the door, wiping the dough from her hands on to her apron as she went. A suspicion of her purpose flashed through her husband's mind.
"What would you do?" he inquired nervously.
"Tell the gentleman what has taken place."
"Nay," he cried, resolutely barring her way. "Nay. That you shall not. Would you—would you ruin me?"
She gave him a look of contempt, and dodging his grasp she gained the door and was half-way down the passage towards the common room before he had overtaken her and caught her round the middle.
"Are you mad, woman?" he shouted. "Will you undo me?"
"Do you undo me," she bade him, snatching at his hands. But he clutched with the tightness of despair.
"You shall not go," he swore. "Come back and leave the gentleman to make the discovery for himself. I dare swear it will not afflict him overmuch. He has abandoned her sorely since they came; not a doubt of it but that he is weary of her. At least he need not know I lent her horses. Let him think she fled a-foot, when he discovers her departure."
"I will go," she answered stubbornly, dragging him with her a yard or two nearer the door. "The gentleman shall be warned. Is a woman to run away from her husband in my house, and the husband never be warned of it?"
"I promised her," he began.
"What care I for your promises?" she asked. "I will tell him, so that he may yet go after her and bring her back."
"You shall not," he insisted, gripping her more closely. But at that moment a delicately mocking voice greeted their ears.
"Marry, 'tis vastly diverting to hear you," it said. They looked round, to find one of the party of town sparks that had halted at the inn standing arms akimbo in the narrow passage, clearly waiting for them to make room. "A touching sight, sir," said he sardonically to the landlord. "A wondrous touching sight to behold a man of your years playing the turtle-dove to his good wife like the merest fledgeling. It grieves me to intrude myself so harshly upon your cooing, though if you'll but let me pass you may resume your chaste embrace without uneasiness, for I give you my word I'll never look behind me."
Abashed, the landlord and his dame fell apart. Then, ere the gentleman could pass her, Mistress Quinn, like a true opportunist, sped swiftly down the passage and into the common room before her husband could again detain her.
Now, within the common room of the Suffolk Arms Sir Crispin sat face to face with a very pretty fellow, all musk and ribbons, and surrounded by some half-dozen gentlemen on their way to London who had halted to rest at Stafford.
The pretty gentleman swore lustily, affected a monstrous wicked look, assured that he was impressing all who stood about with some conceit of the rakehelly ways he pursued in town.
A game started with crowns to while away the tedium of the enforced sojourn at the inn had grown to monstrous proportions. Fortune had favoured the youth at first, but as the stakes grew her favours to him diminished, and at the moment that Cynthia rode out of the inn-yard, Mr. Harry Foster flung his last gold piece with an oath upon the table.
"Rat me," he groaned, "there's the end of a hundred."
He toyed sorrowfully with the red ribbon in his black hair, and Crispin, seeing that no fresh stake was forthcoming, made shift to rise. But the coxcomb detained him.
"Tarry, sir," he cried, "I've not yet done. 'Slife, we'll make a night of it."
He drew a ring from his finger, and with a superb gesture of disdain pushed it across the board.
"What'll ye stake?" And, in the same breath, "Boy, another stoup," he cried.
Crispin eyed the gem carelessly.
"Twenty Caroluses," he muttered.
"Rat me, sir, that nose of yours proclaims you a jew, without more. Say twenty-five, and I'll cast."
With a tolerant smile, and the shrug of a man to whom twenty-five or a hundred are of like account, Crispin consented. They threw; Crispin passed and won.
"What'll ye stake?" cried Mr. Foster, and a second ring followed the first.
Before Crispin could reply, the door leading to the interior of the inn was flung open, and Mrs. Quinn, breathless with exertion and excitement, came scurrying across the room. In the doorway stood the host in hesitancy and fear. Bending to Crispin's ear, Mrs. Quinn delivered her message in a whisper that was heard by most of those who were about.
"Gone!" cried Crispin in consternation.
The woman pointed to her husband, and Crispin, understanding from this that she referred him to the host, called to him.
"What know you, landlord?" he shouted. "Come hither, and tell me whither is she gone!"
"I know not," replied the quaking host, adding the particulars of Cynthia's departure, and the information that the lady seemed in great anger.