There was an indescribable expression on her countenance as she sat awaiting his answer—keen anxiety, ill-concealed under an air of pretended artlessness.
“Vaga!”
It was not he who pronounced her name; though “Vaga,” with “Powell” adjoined, were the words nearest to his lips. She would have given the world to hear him speak them. But it could not be then. Her sister had called to her, at that moment approaching with Sir Richard. Most ill-timed approach, for it interrupted a dialogue which, allowed to continue, might, and likely would, have ended in declarations of love—confessions full and mutual.
Chapter Fifteen.
“Dear Little Mer.”
“Turn and turn, sister,” said Sabrina, as she rode up. “You’ve had sport enough with your great eagles. Suppose we go up to the hill, and give my dear little Mer a cast-off?”
“Dear little Mer” was a merlin, that sate perched on her left wrist, in size to the peregrines as a bantam cock to the biggest of chanticleers. Withal a true falcon, and game as the gamest of them.
Why its mistress proposed changing the scene of their sport was that no larks nor buntings—the merlin’s special quarry—were to be met with by the marsh. Their habitat was higher up on the ridge, where there was a tract bare of trees—part pasture, part fallow.