Lionel Ratcliffe, the emphatic speaker, turned to survey with sullen eyes the scene which spread away beneath the balustrade of the Peacock Walk. It was the ripest hour of an early June day. The wood-crowned slopes, dropping down from the garden, were bathed in mellow light. Farther away, rich pastures, gently swelling into knolls, melted into purple haze, until they were gathered into the distant amethystine moors. Almost as far as the eye could reach, the land and all that stood on it—timber, meadow, homestead, hamlet—belonged to Rockhurst, fit appanage to those massy castle walls that rose clear-cut against the blue air, in all the majesty of ancient power. And as he gazed, Lionel Ratcliffe’s heart grew sombre even as his glance. A keen-faced man, old-looking for his thirty years, somewhat below the middle height, with marked features, cold blue eyes and thin lips that betrayed the working of an intellect as sharp as the steel that hung by his side.
His companion was of vastly different stamp. Country bumpkin was written on the face of Edward Hare, on every seam of his oversmart suit; country wits stared from his prominent eye, were heralded by the laugh ever ready upon his mouth—a mouth, one dared swear, that had known no better taste in life than the rim of an ale can, the hard cheek of some bouncing Dorcas.
Waking from his abstraction, Ratcliffe wheeled upon his cousin, and resumed his indictment:—
“It is even as I tell you,” quoth he. “They are both as apt as tinder: it needs but a spark now to set the glow. ’Slife, Ned, I little thought thine would be the hand to strike flint!”
“Mine, Cousin Lionel?” broke in the other, whining. “Nay, nay—”
But the first, flinging out an accusing forefinger, bore down the plaintive interruption:—
“Then why didst bring her over here to-day?—Come now, ’tis plain enough. Dost favour my suit, or young Rockhurst’s?”
“Why, you know I’ll have none but you,” bellowed Edward Hare. “Harry Rockhurst …?” he cried. “Phew!”
He snapped his fingers and blew through them, threw himself into an attitude of defiance and, so doing, stumbled into his new-fangled sword which, carry it at whatever angle he tried, seemed ever in his way. Ratcliffe steadied his kinsman, then, still holding him by the elbow, drew him toward the stone bench, overhung by climbing roses. Having jerked his companion down upon it, he let himself subside beside him, crossed his legs and proceeded, contemptuously, good-humoured yet incisive:—
“If I wed Mistress Harcourt, your sister, is’t not a bargain? Shalt not continue to have bed and board and bottle beneath her roof? Aye, and many more of old Harcourt’s round pieces to chirp in thy pockets at cockfight and hammer fair? And when we go to Whitehall …” He paused impressively.