Then the violet eyes moved along the path, and all the pretty laughter went out. A white hand drifted like falling snow, stole a tress of hair, and shining pearls began cruelly to bite the silk.
No maid could have desired a fairer vision.
Geoffrey, tall, slender, and flushed, stood between the trees, his bow in his hands, his Saxon blue eyes meeting the violet glances of timidity with free admiration. The maid of the fire-side beheld his clear complexion, his fair hair tied loosely at the nape of his neck, his strong figure; and as she watched for a few moments, which were not measured by time, her bosom began to rise and fall. Had she not prayed for such a vision? She had surely wasted her sweetness long enough upon the unsatisfying things of her daily life in that lone, hard land. There was that in her young blood which rebelled against her convent-like environment, where she had indeed her freedom, but where the tree of knowledge had not been trained to grow.
Viner stepped out and doffed his feathered cap.
"Fair mistress," he said, bending before this beauty of the grove, "give me your pardon for coming on you so suddenly. I am a traveller on my way to the south."
Madeleine Labroquerie answered him only with her eyes.
"Can you tell me how many English miles I am from Plymouth?"
He looked up, and learnt that the sun had not yet left the grove. He saw the cloud of hair waving iridescent. His gaze wandered over the beautiful head, until two eyes like purple iris flowers met his.
"But I am not English."
"Yet you speak in English," he protested.