Her most earnest wish was to rejoin her Gabriella; but there, where she had been discovered, she could least hope to lie concealed. She must still, therefore, fly, in lonely silence. But she besought Sir Jaspar to take her any whither rather than to Salisbury, where she had had the horrour of being examined by the advertisement. Proud to receive her commands, he recommended to her a farm-house about three miles from the city, of which the proprietor and his wife, who were worthy and honest people, had belonged, formerly, to his family. She thankfully agreed to this proposal: but, when they arrived at the farm, they heard that the master and mistress were gone to a neighbouring fair, whence they were not expected back for an hour or two; and that they had locked up the parlour. Some labourers being in the kitchen, Sir Jaspar proposed driving about in the interval; and ordered the postilion to Wilton. [Pg 728] [Pg 728] CHAPTER LXXXII Absorbed in grief, and unable to converse, though endeavouring to listen to the Baronet, Juliet was only drawn from her melancholy reverie, by the rattling of the carriage upon a pavement, as it passed, through a spacious gate, into the court-yard of a magnificent country seat. She demanded what this meant. Where better, he demanded in return, could she while away the interval of waiting, than in viewing the finest works of art, displayed in a temple consecrated to their service? This was a scheme to force back all her consideration. In hearing him pronounce the word Wilton, she had merely thought of the town; not of the mansion of the Earl of Pembroke; which she now positively refused entering; earnestly representing the necessity, as well as propriety, in a situation so perilous, of the most entire obscurity. He assured her that she would be less liable to observation in a repository of the beaux arts, at the villa of a nobleman, than by waiting in a post-chaise, before the door of an inn; as he must indispensably change horses; and grant a little repose to his old groom, who had been out with him all day. This she could not dispute, convinced, herself, that her greatest danger lay in being recognized, or remarked, within the precincts of an inn.
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