She had seated herself as she spoke, and she motioned to Evander to take his place by her side. When she paused he asked:
“Are you so strenuous an amazon?”
She answered him very earnestly:
“I miss the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a woman’s life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it! Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce ecstasy. To drop from that brisk spin and whetted edge of life into this housewife’s twilight is all one with being some sea-old admiral and drowning in a canal.”
The daughters of Israel could not have thrown more sadness into their voice, Evander thought, as they sang by the waters of Babylon. If her face was fair in animation, it seemed still more fair in sadness.
“Has the Lady of Harby no employment,” he asked, gently, “to spur the trudging time?”
Brilliana laughed rather cheerlessly.
“Oh, mercy, yes! Can she not overwatch the gardener to see that he planteth the right sort of herbs and flowers at the new of the moon, at moon full, and at moon old? She can chat with Mistress Cook of sallets and fricassees and fritters; she can count the linen; she can preserve quinces; she can distil you aqua composita or imperial water, or water of Bettony, against she grow old; she can be dairy-wise, cellar-wise, laundry-wise—oh, there are a thousand thousand things she can do if she want to do them, but the plague of it is, since I have burned powder, these decent drudgeries no longer divert me.”
She gave a little sigh as she ended her enumeration of a housewife’s tasks, and then banished the sigh with a smile. Evander found himself thinking that a man might count himself happy for whom this lady should sigh so at parting and smile so in welcome. But what he said was:
“Against your next distillation I can give you a very praisable recipe for a cordial. It is a Swedish fancy and much favored by the ladies of the North.”