Ravenshaw cleared his throat, without reason, and tried to meet her glance without seeing her, if that had been possible.
"You are a happy maid," quoth he, settling down to a disagreeable business. "'Tis proven that you may play the runaway for an hour or two, when you wish, and none be the wiser. There's many a maid would give her best gown thrice over, for that assurance."
"Troth, it serves me nothing," she said, with a forlornness he could not understand. "An I were to play the runaway again, whither should I run?"
He thought for an instant of going into the mystery of her former desire to run away; but he decided that, as time pressed, it were better to hold to the present design.
"Whither, indeed?" quoth he. "Faith, London has no lack of pleasant bowers, where beauty may hear itself praised by the lips of love. Sure, you look as if I talked Greek to you. Certainly you are wont to hear yourself admired?"
"Oh!" she murmured, at a loss, with a smile, and a blush of confusion.
"Troth, now," said he; "confess you enjoy to be admired."
"Oh, pray," she faltered, "talk not of such things. I know not how to answer."
"Yet you take pleasure in hearing them? Come, the truth, mistress. Faith, 'tis but a simple question."