“Nay, to— Oh, pray you, ask me not, Aunt Rachel! It makes no matter.”
“Ha! When a maid saith that,—a maid of thy years, Clare,—I know metely well what she signifieth. Thou art a good child. Get thee up-stairs and pin on thy carnation knots.”
Clare went up the wide hall staircase with a slow, tired step, and without making any answer beyond a faint attempt at a smile.
“Ha!” said Rachel again, to herself. “Providence doth provide all things. Methinks, though, at times, ’tis by the means of men and women, the which He maketh into little providences. I could find it in mine heart to fall to yonder game but now. Only I will bide quiet, methinks, till to-morrow. Well-a-day! if yon grandmother Eve of ours had ne’er ate yon apple! Yet Master Tremayne will have it that I did eat it mine own self. Had I so done, Adam might have whistled for a quarter. The blind, stumbling moles men are! Set a pearl and a pebble afore them, and my new shoes to an old shoeing-horn, but they shall pick up the pebble, and courtesy unto you for your grace. And set your mind on a lad that you do count to have more sense than the rest, and beshrew me if he show you not in fair colours ere the week be out that he is as great a dunce as any. I reckon Jack shall be the next. Well, well!—let the world wag. ’Twill all be o’er an hundred years hence. They shall be doing it o’er again by then. Howbeit, ’tis ill work to weep o’er spilt milk.”
Sir Piers Feversham and his nephew arrived late that evening. The former was a little older than Sir Thomas Enville, and had mixed more in general society;—a talkative, good-natured man, full of anecdote; and Blanche at least found him very entertaining.
John Feversham, the nephew, was almost the antipodes of his uncle. He was not handsome, but there was an open, honest look in his grey eyes which bore the impress of sincerity. All his movements were slow and deliberate, his manners very quiet and calm, his speech grave and sedate. Nothing in the shape of repartee could be expected from him; and with him Blanche was fairly disgusted.
“As sober as a judge, and as heavy as a leaden seal!” said that young lady,—who had been his next neighbour at the supper-table,—when she was giving in her report to Clare while they were undressing. “He hath but an owl’s eye for beauty, of whatever fashion. Thou mindest how fair was the sunset this even? Lo’ thou, he could see nought but a deal of water in the sea, and divers coloured clouds in the sky. Stupid old companion!”
“And prithee, Mistress Blanche, who ever did see aught in the sea saving a cruel great parcel of water?”
“Good lack, Bab!—thou art as ill as he. Clare, what seest thou in the sea?”
Clare tried to bring her thoughts down to the subject.