He did not want her as he had once done. His wish for the company of the real woman whom he had long seen her to be, was far less than it had been erewhile for the society of the loved and loveable ideal which he was now convinced that she was not. Still the old love, though stifled, repressed, and repulsed, was yet alive, and might have been blown into a flame had Alianora cared to take the trouble. Roger sighed as he turned away.
"Be it so, Dame," he answered, speaking more lightly than he felt. "But your Ladyship will scarce look for me to rest content in being utterly bereft of the company of ladies. I shall take Nannette withal from Usk."
"Gramercy! to what end?" demanded Alianora, opening her handsome eyes in astonishment.
A smile of rather bitter amusement played round the lips of the Earl. "Choose your Ladyship the reason," said he, still lightly. "You have no grudge thereunto?"
"I? Good lack, nay! An' it like your Lordship to burden you with a maid of nine years, you be welcome of very inwitte.[#] I shall have the lesser charge."
[#] Most heartily.
Her husband might reasonably have inquired what charge she had ever taken of the children, or how it was to be lessened when they were already out of her care: but he passed it by.
"Wenteline will ease you thereof," said he. "Your Ladyship grudgeth not, methinks, that she should bide hence with the childre?"
"Not I, forsooth! Have with them whom you will," was the careless answer. "I love none of them so dear that I may not live without them."
Roger knew as well as Alianora that the pronoun included himself. He sent Anne into raptures, and Guenllian into much surprise, by an order that they should be ready to accompany him. His male friends were inclined to be exceedingly merry over this odd notion of the Earl. That he should have taken even his heir, at that early age, would have seemed to them amusing; but to choose a girl of nine for his companion struck them as a preposterous absurdity. Earl Roger paid no attention to them. Extremely sensitive to the lightest censure from lips that he loved, he was now perfectly callous alike to ridicule and to anger from others.