“Aye, it is, your honour!”
“You fell for old Master Cuddington? He should stir out, he should go hawking! Is your mate there weeping or ugly that she sits turned away, and her face in her hand?”
“It is her way. She means nothing.”
“She seems a fine lass—should not be in the dumps! Hey, my girl!—No?”
“Robins and wrens must not be perverse,” the big man said sharply. “Lift your head, woman, or I shall think you’re hiding the plague!”
She turned upon him a twisted face. Brown she was and dressed after another fashion than on a supper time in Middle Forest when the June eve was cool and a fire crinkled on the hearth, and Ailsa brought more wine, and Robert Somerville said, “Morgen Fay—and hath she not look of the name?” Brown and dressed poorly and changed, and yet Sir Humphrey Somerville stared.
“I’ve seen you before, but where? Oh, now I know where! Well, and is it so!”
He laughed, he seemed about to descend from his horse and enter into talk, and then to bethink himself, looking sidewise at his daughter and her lover. At last it was, within himself, “I’ll think a while and come quietly again. To-morrow, aye, to-morrow!” Aloud he said, “Flower garden, and something about a witch—but all women are witches! And so you live now on this side of the hills? And now I remember me something of a letter from my cousin, and a great trouble you were in!”
He looked from her to Richard Englefield, but having no knowledge there, saw only a brown-gold woodchopper. Taking a noble from his pouch he spun it down upon the ground between them. “Old Cuddington pays poorly. Seest it? Vanish not between to-day and to-morrow, Egyptian!”
He backed his big horse; he and his daughter and her lover and the men with the hawks rode on through the wood. Drooping branches came between; they were hidden, they were gone.