“Oh, but you looked your consent—and I never saw your eyes so beautiful, such a tender gray.” He flushed with pleasure, still, however, protesting; but she was already at the door, whence she looked back at him with a roguish smile, “I shall give you half an hour to make Aunt Clevering see things as we do. At the end of that time I will be here with Eustace; and if you wish to go on being friends with me, be sure to have on your very best manners and—and that beautiful light in your eyes.”
She kept her word; no one ever knew what passed between Richard and his mother, but an hour later Mistress Clevering, stiff of lip, but courteous of manner, bade Betty take Master Singleton from Richard’s room to the parlour, and find him some refreshment. And when Betty had obeyed, Joscelyn softly closed the door behind them, shutting them into a rose-hued world of their own, where it were sacrilege for another to intrude. Upstairs she heard Richard calling her entreatingly, but remembering by what means her victory over his prejudice had been won, she pretended not to hear, but ran swiftly into the street, and reached Mistress Strudwick’s door with such a glowing face that that lady exclaimed:—
“Hoity-toity, child! still letting your cheeks play the Royalist, although the war is done? Your sweetheart should see you now. In sooth, I think Amanda Bryce would even agree that you are pretty. Come here and tell an old woman what all these blushes mean.”
And Joscelyn’s fibbing tongue said it was only the race she had run in the wind from her door.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
AN UNANSWERED QUESTION.
“As o’er the grass, beneath the larches there
We gayly stepped, the high noon overhead,
Then Love was born—was born so strong and fair.”
—Gipsy Song.