“Shall not,” she breathed; and then quite low, sweeping his countenance once with her glance, and then fixing it steadily on the ground. “She did not drink it.”
The emphasis was slight, slighter than the flicker of her eyes toward Trastevera, but the impact of her meaning drove the chief’s wife from her. One scarcely saw Trastevera move, but there was now a rift between the two women, which widened with the shocked perception in the listening circle. Persilope’s recovery was instant, some sternness with it.
“What had been done,” he said, “was done by all the Council with good reason. But what reason is here beyond a girl’s protesting fancy?”
Again Daria’s mutinous eyes searched the meadow, and her resistance rose visibly in advance of its support.
“Reason enough!” The group of young persons at the foot of the circle turned upon itself, and released the figure of a young man about thirty, tall and personable.
“I have reason”—his voice shook, as though the words had been too long repressed in him and escaped bubblingly—“the best of reasons, for I ... we love....”
He had hesitated an instant over the admission, wanting some quick assurance which flashed between the girl and him. Instantly it brought from the women, in whose care and keeping she had chiefly been, quick cries of protest and denial, falling almost on the stroke of his declaration.
“But you”—Persilope voiced the general knowledge—“you have been these three years at River Ward, you have not seen her.”
“Not for three years,” admitted the lover, “for as soon as I knew that I loved her I went away, that I might keep her honor and mine.” His thought worked uneasily, but he went on. “I have always loved her, but I had not told her so when it came my turn to serve with Mancha, and while I was away you chose her to be the Ward. I went back and served my time. When I returned to Deep Fern I saw her walking with the women in the cool of the morning and knew that I loved her. That was the year the water came down from Water Gate and tore up the valley. In the flood I carried her——”
He smiled; the inexpressible joyousness of the woodlander broke upward in the remembrance.