“I am not so hungry. Have I your leave to go?”
He made as if to depart; Brilliana met his motion with a little frown.
“Are you so eager?” she asked, in a voice in which regret and petulance were dexterously commingled.
Evander answered her gravely. “Yesterday you said that a Puritan presence was hateful.”
Brilliana laughed blithely and her curls quivered in the sunshine.
“You must not harp on a mad maid’s anger. Yesterday you were my enemy, a thing of threats and treason. To-day all’s different; to-day you are my guest. Soon you will ride hence, and we will, if Providence please, never meet again. But for a span of hours let us make believe to be friend and friend, till Colonel Cromwell send my cousin and your liberty.”
Evander was tempted to quarrel with himself for being so ready to welcome this overture. But yesterday this woman had spattered him with insults, snared him on a strained plea, bargained away his life for the body of a spy. Yesterday she had shuddered at the thought of any link of kinship between them, as she might have shuddered at kinship with a wronger of women, a killer of children, a coward. Yet to-day, as she stood there, sunshine on her hair, sunshine in her eyes, a fairy lady standing in that circle of solemn yews, he could find in his heart no regret for anything that had brought him to her presence. He would take gladly what she offered gayly, two days of friendship with so radiant a maid—and then? He left that thought unanswered to reply to Brilliana.
“Madam,” he said, with a very ceremonious bow, “I will pretend that we are going to be friends till the end of my life.”
Brilliana clapped her hands like a child that has been promised some coveted comfit.
“You are brave at make-believe. In the mean time let us keep each other company a little. Surely it is dull for a man of action to be a prisoner, and for my own part I mope sadly now that my little war is well over.”