"What was it," she whispered, breathlessly,—"the matter that held you and Bernard in such serious converse?"
"And has your heart given you no hint of it?" he laughed.
"And why, dear father? What has my heart to do with your talk of guards and ammunition and supplies,—save that it is with you in everything?"
The baronet released her hand and, instead, placed his arm about her slender and rounded waist. "It is a story that I cannot tell you, sweet,—I, who am your father," he said. "But I think that you shall not have to wait long for the telling of it, for both youth and love are impatient. And here comes the good Maggie with the candles."
During the meal the baronet was more lively and entertaining than Beatrix had seen him for years, and Beatrix, in her turn, was unusually untalkative and preoccupied. The girl wanted to give her undivided attention to the quiet voice of her heart. The man was equally anxious to avoid introspection as she to court it. But he, for all his laughter and gay stories of gay times spent, displayed a colourless face and haunted eyes behind the candle-light; while she, sitting in silence, glowed like a rare flower. Her dark, massed tresses, her eyes of unnamable colour, her throat and lips and brow, were all radiant with the magic fire at her heart.
Sir Ralph, after bringing a disjointed tale to a vague ending, sipped his wine, put down the glass clumsily, and suddenly turned away from the table. The bitterness of his lot had caught him by the throat. But she noticed nothing of his change of manner; and presently they left the table and moved to the fire. He busied himself with heaping faggots across the dogs. Then she filled his tobacco-pipe for him, and lit it with a coal from the hearth, puffing daintily. He had just got it in his hand when a knocking sounded on the door, and Maggie Stone opened to Kingswell.
Upon Kingswell's entrance, Sir Ralph, after greeting him cordially but quietly, donned his cloak and hat, and begged to be excused for a few minutes. "I have a word for Trigget," he said. Then he pulled on his gloves, pushed open the door, and stepped out to the dark.
Two candles burned on the table. Maggie Stone snuffed them, surveyed the room and its inmates with a comprehensive glance, and at last forced her unwilling feet kitchenward again. Her heart was as sentimental as heroic, was Maggie Stone's, and her nature was of an inquisitive turn. She sighed plaintively as she left the presence of the young couple.
The door leading to the kitchen had no more than closed behind the servant than Bernard, without preliminaries, dropped on one knee before the lady of his adoration, and lifted both her hands to his lips. She did not move, but stood between the candles and the firelight, all a-gleam in her beauty and her fine raiment, and gazed down at the golden head. Her lips smiled, but her eyes were grave.
"Dear heart," murmured the lad, without lifting his face or altering his position,—"dear heart, can it be true?"