“Certes. I loved Mayken Floriszoon, who died at Leyden, the day after help came. And I loved Aunt Jacobine; and Vrouw Van Vliet, who took care of me before I came hither. And I loved—O Blanche, how dearly!—my father and my mother.”
Blanche’s ideas were running in one grove, and Lysken’s in quite a different one.
“Ay, but I mean, Lysken—another sort of love.”
“Another sort!” said Lysken, looking up again from the stocking which she was darning. “Is there any sort but one?”
“Oh ay!” responded Blanche, feeling her experience immeasurably past that of Lysken.
“Thou art out of my depth, Blanche, methinks,” said Lysken, re-threading her needle in a practical unromantic way. “Love is love, for me. It differeth, of course, in degree; we love not all alike. But, methinks, even a man’s love for God, though it be needs deeper and higher far, must yet be the same manner of love that he hath for his father, or his childre, or his friends. I see not how it can be otherwise.”
Blanche was shocked at the business-like style in which Lysken darned while she talked. Had such a question been asked of herself, the stocking would have stood still till it was settled. She doubted whether to pursue the subject. What was the use of talking upon thrilling topics to a girl who could darn stockings while she calmly analysed love? Still, she wanted somebody’s opinion; and she had an instinctive suspicion that Clare would be no improvement upon her cousin.
“Well, but,” she said hesitatingly, “there is another fashion of love, Lysken. The sort that a woman hath toward her husband.”
“That is deeper, I guess, than she hath for her father and mother, else would she not leave them to go with him,” said Lysken quietly; “but I see not wherein it should be another sort.”
“’Tis plain thou didst never feel the same, Lysken,” returned Blanche sentimentally.