“Mistress Anne Beckley was here with my lady this afternoon.”
“Indeed!” he said, huskily, as he still gazed down.
“Mistress Anne asked after your health, and bade me say that they missed you very much.”
“And you, what did you say?” he asked, softly.
“I said you were busy with my father, watching over the trial of great pieces of ordnance and the making of powder,” replied Mace, who was fast recovering her calmness.
“Why did you not tell her I could not tear myself from the home where my every thought was centred; that I could not live away from her who was to be my wife? See, Mace, dearest, I brought you this from town. It is to grace your sweet, white throat. There, I thought the pearls were beautiful, but they look poor and mean, after all.”
Mace’s hands nervously clasped Sir Mark’s wrists as, with a quick movement, he brought them from behind him, and throwing a handsome string of pearls round her neck he clasped it there.
If her suitor’s wrists had burned her, she could not have snatched her hands away more quickly as she shrank back once more into her seat, gazing at him with so strange a look that the words he was about to utter failed on his lips, and he stood for a while gazing down at her in silence.
“You are surprised,” he said at last, smiling. “Well, they were given clumsily, but you teach me to be humble and reverent before you, Mace. I grow speechless in your presence, as with a kind of humble adoration, as I look forward to the day when you will be my wife.”
“Your—wife!” she faltered.