“Yes,” said Launce, fired by his own fancies—“like this.” He flung two handfuls of sand in the air, and began to dance on the starved grass. He was small and slight, and he moved, in his wild fit, like an elf of the woods, a leaf in the wind. All the steps he ever knew he wove into a medley, beautiful because of the speed and grace of his little flinging body. Then, dancing fast and faster, he lost them, and there was nothing but young life leaping in the air, as the blood in the heart, the wave on the sea. “This is how the little faun dances,” he cried, shrilly. And in a moment Lucia had swept up her trailing skirts, and was dancing too.
If the child danced like a leaf in the wind, she danced like a flame in the bracken, a swallow in the air. Launce dropped on his hands and knees to watch her, breathless, and she wove a chain of lovely movements around him as he knelt. Her feet moved like music, her green habit seemed to bear her up like a bubble with fire in the heart of it. Her wild face was flushed, exquisite under her shaken hair. But when Geoffrey Launcelot came down the path she stopped in a flash, and was once more the great lady of Great House.
“Will can’t come,” said Geoffrey, pulling on his gloves; he had apparently seen nothing of the dancing. “He bade me offer my escort, Signora.”
“Shall we ride, sir?” said Lucia gravely.
Mr. Launcelot bowed. “If you will so far honour me, Signora?”
Then, catching the subdued wonder of his eyes, Lucia laughed, and Geoffrey began to laugh, and Launce echoed them for very pleasure in the sound. “But do not call me that, Cousin Geoffrey,” said Lucia. “Do not say ‘Signora.’ ”
“What must I say?”
“Say ‘Cousin Lucy.’ That is English, and of the English custom. I wish to forget—the other—”
“Thank you, Cousin Lucy.” Geoffrey did not lift his eyes from his gloves. “I told Simmons to bring the horses round to the foot of the steps. Shall we mount there?”
A flight of broad, shallow stone stairs led from the lower terrace to the beach. They were always scoured and swept by wind and wave, half buried in sand, with shells and bent-grass in the cracks. Simmons was holding the two horses on the beach-road beneath. Launce joined him, and was warned from Monseigneur’s heels. The others followed. Geoffrey handed Lucia down the old steps as though all London town were watching, and had for his reward the touch of her foot in his hand as she sprang to the saddle.