There was a feeling amongst the trio, which two of them at least could not understand; so greatly had the youth's manners struck them, so forcible was the interest he had created; whilst the third and most interesting of the party found that the handsome lad had unconsciously robbed her of her heart.
"By 'r Lady," said the old knight, "yonder stripling is one of the most singular companions I ever met; without being in the least forward in manners, he somehow impresses one with a feeling of inferiority I cannot understand. He's an extraordinary youth, my masters; and, an he turn not out something beyond the common, I am not a Clopton."
"How well he talks on all subjects!" said Arderne; "and yet how modest doth he seem!"
"How beautiful were those verses he wrote this morning!" said Charlotte.
"If he did write them," said Martin, "lady mine; for mark ye, they may be the offspring of another brain."
"If he wrote them! Martin," said Charlotte: "why, who else could have written them, think ye?"
"Why not another as well as he, lady mine?" said Martin, archly; "what one man can do, another might effect. Methinks one older and more learned must have indited those lines."
"Nay," said Charlotte, "I know not wherefore, but sure I feel that none but he could have penned that sonnet."
"Gramercy," said Martin, "this is to have an opinion of merit, indeed! Doth that stripling, that hero of the quarter-staff, seem to you, Master Walter," he continued, shrewdly glancing at Arderne, "to have so much merit that none other can come up to him?"
"I confess the lad hath made a singular impression upon me," said Arderne, "an impression I cannot shake off or understand. I never was in company with so amiable a youth before."