Don't you observe how Hugh Price is continually with your mother ?" Robert's eyes filled with tears, and he cried: "I will kill him!" William Stump, laughing at the misery he had occasioned, answered: "Marry! lad, you can do naught.

Better win the favor of Hugh, for he can be a cruel master." Robert went on his errand, hating both Hugh Price and William Stump, and he determined to appeal to his mother to have no more to do with Hugh Price.
Robert had been sent on the errand by the mother, that he might be away when Hugh Price came.

She had an intuition, as women sometimes do, that the supreme moment had arrived in which Hugh would "speak his mind." The widow looked very pretty in her lace and silk and frilled cap, from which the raven tresses peeped.

She had also managed to dispose of little Rebecca, so the coast was clear when Mr.Price, on his gayly caparisoned steed, arrived.

To one not acquainted with the state of Hugh Price's mind, his appearance and behavior on the occasion of his ride from Greensprings to Jamestown would have been mysterious and unaccountable.
Dismounting at the stiles he gave the rein to a gayly dressed negro, who led the animal into the barn while the negro girl showed him to the parlor, which was furnished gorgeously.