“Marry, I mean that same,” responded Bertram coolly. “Would it like you, Mistress Maude?”
“Methinks you had better do me to wit whom your avisement should have me to wed,” said Maude, standing on her dignity, and manufacturing an angry tone to keep herself from crying. She would certainly have released her hold of Bertram, and have sat on her pillion in indignant solitude, if she had not felt almost sure that the result would be a fall in the mud. Bertram’s answer was quick and decided.
“Me!”
Maude would have answered with properly injured dignity if she could; but a disagreeable lump of something came into her throat which spoilt the effect.
“Thou hadst better wed me, Maude,” said Bertram coaxingly, dropping his voice and his conventionalities together. “There is not a soul loveth thee as I do; and thou likest me well.”
“I pray you, Master Lyngern, when said I so much?” responded Maude, stung into speech again.
“Just twenty years gone, little Maude,” was the gentle answer.
Bertram’s voice had changed from its bantering tone into a tender, quiet one, and Maude felt more inclined to cry than ever.
“Is that saying truth no longer, Maude?”
Maude’s conscience whispered to her that she must not say any thing of the sort. Still she thought it only proper to hold out a little longer. She was silent; and Bertram, who thought she was coming round, let her alone for a short time. The grey towers of Cardiff slowly rose to view, and in a few seconds more they would no longer be alone.