‘There hath ill come to him, sir; he’s wounded; or—or—’ she said.
The young man seemed suddenly to have collected himself; his embarrassment, if embarrassment it had been, vanished as suddenly as it had come. He rose and came over to where Anne stood.
‘He hath no wound nor hurt of any sort, Anne, but he hath sent me with a message to you, and this is it:—The war is like to keep him so long in the Low Country he dare not ask you to wait.’
‘I’d wait a lifetime for him,’ laughed Anne. ‘If that be all his message he hath troubled you for naught, sir.’
‘ ’Tis not all. The fact is Sebastian has married—married a pretty Dutch wife. He feared to exhaust your patience. He asked me to tell you. “For,” said he, “Anne hath so many lovers ’twill be neither here nor there to her.” As like as not he may be years abroad still.’
There was a moment’s silence. Anne looked her visitor straight in the eyes; she had whitened down to her very lips.
‘You are but fooling with me, sir,’ she said, half whispering the words.
‘I am in sober earnest; ’tis no matter for jest this,’ said the young man, looking at Anne’s blanching cheeks.
‘O good Lord!’ then cried Anne in a piteous crying voice—the note of a bird over its harried nest. She seemed to forget the presence of a stranger, and, sinking down against a settle that stood by the wall, she hid her face in her hands and sobbed, rocking herself back and forwards in her bitter grief.
‘Sebastian, Sebastian dear, you are not wedded true and certain?’ she cried. ‘O God help me, an’ what am I to do now? O Lord! O Lord!’