“And then was tempted more,” Clorinda laughed, still regarding her downcast countenance shrewdly, “by a thing far less to be resisted—a fine gentleman from town, with love-locks falling on his shoulders and ladies’ hearts strung at his saddle-bow by scores. Which found you the most beautiful?”
“Your gown is splendid, sister,” said Anne, with modest shyness. “There will be no beauty who will wear another like it; or should there be one, she will not carry it as you will.”
“But the man—the man, Anne,” Clorinda laughed again. “What of the man?”
Anne plucked up just enough of her poor spirit to raise her eyes to the brilliant ones that mocked at her.
“With such gentlemen, sister,” she said, “is it like that I have aught to do?”
Mistress Clorinda dropped her hand and left laughing.
“’Tis true,” she said, “it is not; but for this one time, Anne, thou lookest almost a woman.”
“’Tis not beauty alone that makes womanhood,” said Anne, her head on her breast again. “In some book I have read that—that it is mostly pain. I am woman enough for that.”
“You have read—you have read,” quoted Clorinda. “You are the bookworm, I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves. And you have read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman? ’Tis not true. ’Tis a poor lie. I am a woman and I do not suffer—for I will not, that I swear! And when I take an oath I keep it, mark you! It is men women suffer for; that was what your scholar meant—for such fine gentlemen as the one you have just watched while he rode away. More fools they! No man shall make me womanly in such a fashion, I promise you! Let them wince and kneel; I will not.”
“Sister,” Anne faltered, “I thought you were not within. The gentleman who rode away—did the servants know?”