"Peggy! 'Tis a year last week since thou didst come to Romney."
"Ay—"
"And then we did forswear all talk of love for a twelvemonth. But the twelvemonth is ended. May I talk of it now?"
Peggy colored rose-red.
"Dost know what manner of thing love is?"
Peggy looked up but sidewise, and so looking took in a glimpse of Mistress Huntoon, and she ran to her as to a refuge.
"Come, thou dear hostess," she said, drawing her in at the wide door, "thou art just in time to answer a question of thy son's, 'What manner of thing is love?'"
Elizabeth Huntoon colored almost as red as Peggy had done but now. It was as though the question had turned back life's dial-point and her youth was before her again. She saw Humphrey bending over her in the window-seat at James City. She could recall the trembling of his fingers as they fastened her necklace. She could almost hear again the beating of her own heart. So real did all this seem that she stood stock still with her finger on her lips, like a statue of Memory, smiling to its own image in the past.
"Love!" she said at last, rousing herself, "why, I am fain to think the beauty of love is that none can describe it because it is different to each soul; nay, that it is different each hour to the same soul."