"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and be in no hurry to choose. Your cousin—what is her name? Oh, I shall not be jealous!"
With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had prepared for her—at a farmstead under Wachusett. He was sending thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.
"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised. "But there will be a dearth of tutors, I fear. I could not, for example, very well ask Mr. Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in the wilderness."
She laughed. Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to be a horsewoman.
"I will do without tutors." She spread her arms wide, as with a swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms, turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he interpreted.
"I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty."
She nodded, drawing a long breath. "I come from the sea-beach, remember."
"Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be yours."
"No. I have never seen a mountain. It will have the sound of waters, too—of its own cataracts. And on the plain I shall learn to gallop, and feel the wind rushing past me. These things, and a few books, and Tatty—" Here she broke off, on a sudden thought. "My lord, there is a question I have put to myself many times, and have promised myself to put to you. Why does Tatty never talk to me about God and religion and such things?"
He did not answer at once.