Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds came in to us along with a freshening air. The strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the lamps already looked wan and faded in the new light. I switched them out before speaking to the pair who watched me.
"I have a story to tell you both," I said. "The beginning of it Phillida has already heard. Perhaps——Have you told Vere about the woman who visited this room, the first night I spent in the house? Who cut her hair and left the braid in my hand to escape from me?"
"Yes," she nodded, wide-eyed.
"Will you go to my chiffonier, there in the alcove, and bring a package wrapped in white silk from the top drawer?"
She did as she was asked and laid the square of folded silk before me. I put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying elixir. Phillida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture.
"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some lucky girls have hair like that? If it was unbound, my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity to have cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles and glitters."
She held it out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him.
"Beautiful," he agreed politely.
No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little cousin's plain face and leave her content, I advanced in respect for him.
In the beginning, it was even harder to speak than I had anticipated. When Phillida laid the braid back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected to credit the story I had to tell? How should I find words to embody it?