"But will he tell? Philip was ever somewhat too silent and secret--I doubt me much if he will tell. Will hint at wrongs done--at cruel treatments--be vague, but say no more."
"I think he will tell you," she replied. "He has longed so to see you since he knew you had returned from France. And, Andrew," the old woman said, laying her hand on the sleeve of the great stalwart soldier whom, as a lad, she had dandled on her knee, "I think he cherishes hopes of revenge on her; above all, on him who did the greater wrong."
"Revenge! Why! what can he do? Unable to leave his chamber, a poor scholar who knows neither passado nor cunning fence of any kind," and the fingers of his left hand played lovingly with the hilt of his sword as he spoke, "nor has ever wandered fifty miles from this old Surrey home of ours--poor Philip! what can he do?"
But as he asked the question, there clattered down the oak staircase the high-heeled shoes worn by a waiting-maid, the wearer whereof said--though not before she had cast a glance of approval over the great sunburned man who stood before her--that her master desired to know if his brother meant not to come and see him now he had come home?
"Ay, sweetheart," that brother said, looking down on the comely girl, and winning her heart at once by that debonair manner which never failed in its effect "Ay, sweetheart, I come at once. Shall we go together, Bridget?"
"Nay," she said, "go in alone to him. There needs no witness of your meeting, and he has much to say. And, Andrew, you asked but now how he might compass revenge for the wrong done him. Can you not guess what he may hope to do--how it may come about?"
"In truth, I cannot," he answered, while his eye still glanced at the shapely waiting-maid now vanishing through a doorway to the back portion of the house, "in truth, I cannot. No thinker I, as you may remember, Bridget; 'twas ever Philip who did that for both of us. And, had he not so thought, the Puritan justices of our boyhood would have clapped me into jail often enough, and been glad of the chance to punish my old cavalier father through me. No, if he means to get vengeance he must make it clear. I will go and see him now."
He strode towards the wide staircase as he spoke, and mounted it, clattering still as he went; looking round the old hall, though, while he did so, and thinking--wanderer as he had been--that, after all, it was good to be under the old roof once more.
"Well enough and pleasant," he muttered to himself, "the life of camps and noise of brawls and battles and the sweet clash of steel 'gainst steel--yet good, too, to come home, now and again."
And, because he was not all a bravo nor free lance who lived only for such fortune as came at the sword's point, his thoughts went back to his childhood's day, when he used to come leaping down those stairs three steps at a time, or swung by his gentle mother's side, his hand in hers; also, he recalled her soft looks and words, and found himself remembering the little simple prayers she had taught him to say.