Peggy reddens.
'It was only that she asked us not to sit under the Judas-tree; she cannot bear any one to sit there—any one else.'
'Any one else!' he repeats, his brief and surface wrath dying away into a smile of passionate happiness; 'any other lovers, you mean. You may blink the word, Peggy; but you cannot blink the thing: we are lovers.'
Peggy does not answer. She has sat down on a seat, above which a great old thorn is just breaking into a foam of blossom. She has taken up this position in all unconsciousness of the advantages it presents, but of which Talbot's eager eye has instant cognisance. The thorn, now thick with flowers, effectually masks all sitters on that seat from the view of any eyes darted at them from the house, the only point whence observation need be dreaded; for what lover minds the robin's round bright eye, or the chaffinch's surveillance?
'We are lovers!' he repeats, sitting down resolutely beside her.
The thorn, leaning as old trees will, projects so far beyond their heads as to make a natural arbour for them, and tosses down now and again whiffs of its pungent perfume, which some strange persons affect to dislike.
'Are we?' she says, the words travelling softly out on a long sigh. 'You will think me very stupid'—the red rose of Lancaster for the moment chasing her pale sister of York out of her face—'but, old as I am—twenty-three next birthday—I do not know what love—that kind of love—feels like. I—I—have never had any opportunity of knowing.'
He stares at her in an enraptured astonishment. For such a confession as this, his apprenticeship to Betty has certainly not prepared him. Can it be conceivable that he is the first—the very first—to reap the flowers of this fairest field?
'Do you mean to say,' he inquires, almost with incredulity, 'that you have never given back one small grain of love to any one of the many men who must have showered it upon you?'
'But they have not,' returns she, a slight humorous smile pushing its way through her blushes. 'You are determined that I have had so many lovers, and I have had scarcely any. Two or three people have wanted to marry me—not many. Oh, not at all many! You could count them on one hand, with several fingers to spare; and I do not think that they loved me. They did not give me that impression. They thought I should be a useful wife, strong and active; but love—love—love,' repeating the word dreamily—'no,' shaking her head. 'There are not many women of twenty-three who can say so, I suppose; and I see that you have a difficulty in believing me; but love has never come near me.'