She looked at him. The complete change of topic permitted it. “If I desired you so to do?” she inquired, and added: “I love the fragrance of it.”
He raised his brows. “Fragrance?” quoth he. “My Lady Ostermore has another word for it.” He took the pipe and jar from her. “'Tis no humoring, this, of a man you imagine sick—no silly chivalry of yours?” he questioned doubtfully. “Did I think that, I'd never smoke another pipe again.”
She shook her head, and laughed at his solemnity. “I love the fragrance,” she repeated.
“Ah! Why, then, I'll pleasure you,” said he, with the air of one conferring favors, and filled his pipe. Presently he spoke again in a musing tone. “In a week or so, I shall be well enough to travel.”
“'Tis your intent to travel?” she inquired.
He set down the jar, and reached for the tinderbox. “It is time I was returning home,” he explained.
“Ah, yes. Your home is in France.”
“At Maligny; the sweetest nook in Normandy. 'Twas my mother's birthplace, and 'twas there she died.”
“You have felt the loss of her, I make no doubt.”
“That might have been the case if I had known her,” answered he. “But as it is, I never did. I was but two years old—she, herself, but twenty—when she died.”