“How could I?” she replied on the instant, still with the smile which kept him from shaping a harsh interpretation of her words. “But isn’t Thessaly a rather incongruous place for sentimental people? We have no tourney-field—only rolling-mills and button-factories and furnaces; and there isn’t a knight, much less a herald in a tabard, left in the whole village. Their places have been taken by moulders and puddlers. So what will the minstrel do then, poor thing?”
“Let him come here sometimes,” said the young man, in the gravely ardent tone which this sort of situation demanded. “Let him come here, and forget that this is the nineteenth century; forget time and Thessaly altogether.”
“Oh, but mamma wouldn’t like that at all; I mean about your forgetting so much. She expects you particularly to remember both time and Thessaly. No, decidedly; that would never do!”
The smile and the glance were intoxicating. The young man made his plunge.
“But may I come?” His voice had become low and vibrant, and it went on eagerly: “May I come if I promise to remember everything; if I swear to remember nothing else save what you—and your mother—would have me charge my memory with?”
“We are always glad to see our friends on Tuesdays, from two to five.”
“But I am not in the plural,” he urged, gently.
“We are,” she made answer, still watching him with a smile, from where she half-reclined in the easy-chair. Her face was in the shadow of the heavier under-curtains; the mellow light gave it a uniform tint of ivory washed with rose, and enriched the wonder of her eyes, and softened into melting witchery the lines of lips and brows and of the raven diadem of curls upon her forehead.
“Yes; in that the graces and charms of a thousand perfect women are centred here in one,” murmured Horace. It was in his heart as well as his head to say more, but now she rose abruptly at this, with a laugh which for the instant disconcerted him.
“Oh, I foresee such a future for this firm of yours,” she cried, with high merriment alike in voice and face.