CHAPTER V
PEGGY
Giles Brent was not in an enviable frame of mind on this January morning, after his visit to St. Gabriel's manor. The gold lace on his coat, marking his rank as deputy-governor of Maryland, covered an anxious heart, and as he walked along the path over the bluff in the village of St. Mary's he twirled the gold-tipped lacings of his doublet, and cursed his fate in being caught in this coil of colonial politics, and wished his cousin Leonard Calvert would come home from England and attend to his own business.
Why, all of a sudden, was his brow cleared of its furrows, and his mind of its worries for the moment? Because he had caught sight at a window of a girl's face,—a faulty, charming face with velvet brown eyes, and hair that shook a dusky glamour over them,—the face of Peggy Neville.
This Peggy was a born coquette—not of the type that sets its cap at a man as obviously as a boy casts the net for butterflies, but a coquette by instinct, full of contradictory impulses, with eyes that whispered "Come!" even while blush and frown cried "Halt!"—with the gaiety of a flight of larks, alternating with pouts and tears as sudden and violent as a summer thunder-shower. Such a girl has often a peculiar charm for an older man, who looks on amused at her coquetries, and finds her friendship as firm as her loves are fickle. Between Governor Brent and Peggy Neville such a friendship was established, and it was with a delight dimpling into smiles that she threw wide the window, and leaning out into the frosty air, cried out joyously,—
"Good-morning, your Excellency! Do you bring any news of that good-for-nothing brother of mine?"
The governor shook his sword at her.
"I will have you in the sheriff's hands if you speak so lightly of my close friend," he answered. "Is your aunt at home?"
"No, but my aunt's niece is, and much exercised to hear the news from Kent Fort. So prithee come in and rest awhile."