“Who knows? The flesh is weak.”
“Speak for yourself, my lad. Why, you are thinking of some other Margaret, not Margaret a Peter. Was ever my mind turned to folly and frailty? Stay, is it because you were my husband once, as these lines avouch? Think you the road to folly is beaten for you more than another? Oh! how shallow are the wise, and how little able are you to read me, who can read you so well from top to toe, Come, learn thine A B C. Were a stranger to proffer me unchaste love, I should shrink a bit, no doubt, and feel sore, but I should defend myself without making a coil; for men, I know, are so, the best of them sometimes. But if you, that have been my husband, and are my child's father, were to offer to humble me so in mine own eyes, and thine, and his, either I should spit in thy face, Gerard, or, as I am not a downright vulgar woman, I should snatch the first weapon at hand and strike thee dead.”
And Margaret's eyes flashed fire, and her nostrils expanded, that it was glorious to see; and no one that did see her could doubt her sincerity.
“I had not the sense to see that,” said Gerard quietly. And he pondered.
Margaret eyed him in silence, and soon recovered her composure.
“Let not you and I dispute,” said she gently; “speak we of other things. Ask me of thy folk.”
“My father?”
“Well, and warms to thee and me. Poor soul, a drew glaive on those twain that day, but Jorian Ketel and I we mastered him, and he drove them forth his house for ever.”
“That may not be; he must take them back.”
“That he will never do for us. You know the man; he is dour as iron; yet would he do it for one word from one that will not speak it.”