"Yes, of course--in the boat," he answered. He was obliged to say that, but he glared at me across her as he spoke. We had turned and were walking back to the house, the poplars casting long shadows across our path.
"They were rude," I observed carelessly, my chin very high. "But there is no particular harm done that I can see, Master Van Tree."
"Perhaps not, as far as you can see," he retorted in great excitement. "But perhaps also you are not very far-sighted. You may not see it now, yet harm will follow."
"Possibly," I said, and I was going to follow up this seemingly candid admission by something very boorish, when Mistress Dymphna struck in nervously.
"My father is anxious," she explained, speaking to me, "that I should have as little to do with our Spanish governors as possible, Master Carey. It always vexes him to hear that I have fallen in their way, and that is why my friend feels annoyed. It was not, of course, your fault, since you did not know of this. It was I," she continued hurriedly, "who should not have ventured to the elm tree without seeing that the coast was clear."
I knew that she was timidly trying, her color coming and going, to catch my eye; to appease me as the greater stranger, and to keep the peace between her ill-matched companions, who, indeed, stalked along eying one another much as a wolf-hound and a badger-dog might regard each other across a choice bone. But the young Dutchman's sudden appearance had put me out. I was not in love with her, yet I liked to talk to her, and I grudged her to him, he seemed so mean a fellow. And so--churl that I was--in answer to her speech I let drop some sneer about the great fear of the Spaniards which seemed to prevail in these parts.
"You are not afraid of them, then?" Van Tree said, with a smile.
"No, I am not," I answered, my lip curling also.
"Ah!" with much meaning. "Perhaps you do not know them very well."
"Perhaps not," I replied. "Still, my grandmother was a Spaniard."