Very young indeed, was her inward comment on his startled wondering face turned to her.
“How do you know?” he asked, making no denial of the fact. Denial would have savoured of disloyalty to his new kingdom.
She laughed gently. “Don’t you even know that? What a lot I could teach you if Aymer would hand you over. Listen, Master Christopher, love is the only thing men want to think about alone, just as it’s the only thing a woman never wants to keep to herself. You could think to much better advantage at Marden but it’s no use telling you so. You won’t believe it.”
“I do believe it, only it’s not a question of my advantage, you see.”
“There spoke Aymer’s pupil. Remember roads take a good deal of making and short cuts were made for—lovers.”
She returned to the fire and stood there looking at him with an interest that surprised herself: a tall, gracious presence whose knowledge of his secret hurt not one bit, so clearly did it lie within the realms wherein all gracious, tender women reign.
Then she changed the subject quite abruptly, thrust it back into those hazy regions of speculation from which Christopher had so hardly and impatiently dragged it the previous night.
“I wonder if your mother were alive, if she would be satisfied with you, Christopher, and if she would still want to make a socialist of you.”
“My mother?” he echoed dully.
For a while he struggled with a strange inability to lay hold on the shadowy form he knew so well. He looked round the beautiful room that was but a setting 187 to a lovely woman and then back at her. Why had she spoken of his mother? He again attempted to crystallise the thought of the dearly loved, defeated woman in the presence of her to whom the world denied nothing.