'Ay,' she said, rising and setting her lips tenderly to my brow, which I pettishly turned away, being weakly sullen, 'even so—to meet Robert Harburgh and to kiss him.'
And with that she passed to the door. She turned ere she went out to say a last word.
'And you, Launce, my lad, will also one day desire to leave kissing comfits and find abiding love. And you need not go far afield to look for it either.'
Thus I was left alone with a heaving heart. And I am not ashamed to say that I wept bitterly for poor Launce Kennedy, who had none to care for him in all the wide lone world, in which he was now so sore wounded and cast aside like an old shoe or a broken sword.
But even as I wept and pitied myself, Nell Kennedy danced in, merry as the morn, and brought a great spray of belated hawthorn to set in a dish of water to keep the room sweet.
And I declare I never knew the young lass look so winsome before.
CHAPTER XXII
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL
When Robert Harburgh came in to see me in the evening, I was chill enough in my reception; but since he was of a calm temper, though so great a sworder, I might just as well have embraced him, for all the difference it made to him.
'So,' I said, without giving him more than time to sit down—for all my days I must ever fly headlong at a thing and have done with it—'so you are going to marry Kate Allison?'