She sprang up from her low seat and went to stand in the window-bay. After a time she turned and faced me once again, and the warm blood was in cheek and neck, and there was a soft light in her eyes to make them shine like stars.
"Then you would have me marry Richard Jennifer?" she asked.
'Twas but a little word that honor bade me say, and yet it choked me and I could not say it.
"Dick would have you, Margery; and Dick is my dear friend—as I am his."
"But you?" she queried. "Were you my friend, as well, is this as you would have it?"
My look went past her through the lead-rimmed window-panes to the great oaks and hickories on the lawn; to these and to the white road winding in and out among them. While yet I sought for words in which to give her unreservedly to my dear lad, two horsemen trotted into view. One of them was a king's man; the other a civilian in sober black. The redcoat rode as English troopers do, with a firm seat, as if the man were master of his mount; but the smaller man in black seemed little to the manner born, and daylight shuttled in and out beneath him, keeping time to the jog-trot of his beast.
I thought it passing strange that with all good will to answer her, these coming horsemen seemed to hold me silent. And, indeed, I did not speak until they came so near that I could make them out.
"I am your friend, Margery mine; as good a friend as you will let me be. And as between Richard Jennifer and another, I should be a sorry friend to Dick did I not—"
She heard the clink of horseshoes on the gravel and turned, signing to me for silence while she looked below. The window overhung the entrance on that side, and through the opened air-casement I heard some babblement of voices, though not the words.
"I must go down," she said. "'Tis company come, and my father is away."