“Aye—until she remembers she’s a woman!”
“And what then, sir?”
“Then, child, she becometh truly dangerous!” he answered. “Now here’s you, my Rose, a sweet, simple, country maid that talks like Aspasia, Sophonisba, Pallas Athene and the Three Wise Women of Hunsdon—or Hogsden, or whatever it was—all rolled into one. Yet, child, thou couldst never truly hate, thine eyes are too gentle, thy lips too tenderly full, thyself too generously formed——”
“Meaning ‘buxom,’ I s’pose?”
“Juno-like, let us say.”
“Pray, sir,” she inquired, after another pause, “if your honour marries your enemy—the great lady——”
“When I marry her, child!”
“When your honour marries her—if she doth not wed another—will your honour still think of poor Rose?”
“My honour will, indeed!”
“Then ’twill be wicked and dishonourable in your honour.”