Mistress Mowbray was busy in preparations and, little knowing what she was doing, caught sight of Aline and called,—“Hither, wench, come you and take Master Latour into the pleasaunce and entertain him as ye may.”
Ralph Latour was a tall stern man and Aline’s first thought was that she would fail, but she soon found that, though hard and in a measure unsympathetic, he had a strict and judicial mind, and was quite ready to accept her standpoint, although entirely without warmth or show of feeling.
The child, however, fascinated him also, like the rest. Yet it was in a somewhat different way from her hold on other people. He was a man of considerable learning and taste, who had travelled widely, and in his cold critical way was absorbed in the subtlety of her beauty. Aline thought she had never met any one so awe-inspiring as he made her walk in front of him or sat her down opposite to him, in order that he might look at her.
They discussed the subject thoroughly and he concluded by saying,—“Mistress Gillespie,—you are Mistress Gillespie, I understand?”
“Mistress Aline,” she corrected.
“I am told that you have neither brothers nor uncles and that the line ends in you, does it not?”
“True,” she said.
“Mistress Gillespie, then, I repeat, you have shown considerable acumen and you may take it that there is a coincidence of view between us. Yes,” he added, absent-mindedly speaking aloud, as he looked at her little foot, “the external malleolus has exactly the right emphasis, neither too much nor too little, and I observe the same at the wrist in the styloid process of the ulna. I crave pardon,” he added hastily, “it is time that we joined the others.”
They found that Master Bowman, Lord Middleton’s reeve, had just arrived with his lady, and the company proceeded to the hall.