For some unknown reason the excellent lady took deep umbrage at this last remark.
“Surely, surely!” she repeated, tossing her head, so that her grey curls danced.
“So let it be, then,” bade her brother. Then, in a changed voice he exclaimed:—
“Hush, now, here comes the country widow. Faith, the lad hath taste.”
But here he fell suddenly silent and sprang up. Mistress Rockhurst, surveying him in some anxiety, marked the extraordinary change that came over his countenance.
“As I am a sinful woman” (she afterward told her special gossip), “his lordship turned whey-white. And I do assure you, madam, his eyes blazed in his head—the like of which I have never seen before. ’Twas almost as if he and she had known each other and had never dreamed to meet again. And as for my fine young madam, she came along with her eyes on the ground—nay, the most bashful thing between this and York City. But when she looks up and sees my lord, as white as he went, she goes rosy, and, please you, gives a kind of cry with both her hands outstretched. That may have been artfulness. And if so, my lord met it even as I could have wished; for he but made her a deep bow, and, says he presently, in his very grand way, ‘It gives me pleasure, madam, to make your acquaintance.’ At which you should have seen how was taken aback the widow! ‘Make your acquaintance’ (mark me), says he, which shows he could not have known her before, after all.”
Harry, who had brought his lady in such pride beneath his father’s glance, stood somewhat dashed in the silence that followed Lord Rockhurst’s ceremonious greeting. By nature the most unsuspicious of youths, in his simple existence he had never felt the necessity of studying inner motives in those around him. He knew the tricks of bird and beast, but the secrets of his fellow-creatures he guessed not at. And so all the tokens that his aunt’s shrewd eye had noted were lost upon him. His father had been a trifle over-ceremonious toward a fair neighbour, let alone the mistress of his son’s heart. And she, his dear love, had blushed and grown pale, as was but natural.
“Well, sir,” he cried at last, anxiously, “now that you have seen Mistress Harcourt, do you not give me some reason?”
His father turned a singular glance upon him.