His long eyes moved at their pleasure; and she stood waiting in repose, though the color came and went richly on her cheek. Then he bowed again, the hat clasped to his bosom.
“Thank you,” said he, and replaced his beaver with a turn of the wrist that set all the gray and white plumes rippling round the crown.
“Sir?” she queried, startled, and on her second thought—“my lord?”
At this he broke into a smile. When he smiled, his haughty face gained a rare sweetness.
“Thank you for rising thus early, and coming into the orchard, and standing in the sun rays, and being, my maid, so beautiful. I little thought to find so fair a vision. ’Twill be a sweet one to carry forth with me—if it be the last on earth.”
Her wits were never quick to work. She went her country way, as a rule, as straight and sweetly and unthinkingly as the lilies grow.
To question why a noble visitor at the castle—and a visitor it must be, since his countenance was unfamiliar—should walk forth at the dawn and speak as if this morning saunter were to death, never entered her head.
She stammered: “Oh, sir!” to his compliment, and paused, her lip quivering over the inarticulate sense of her own awkwardness.
“Have you been gathering apples?” quoth he, still smiling on her.
“Ay, sir,” she said; “to make preserve withal;” and faltered yet again, “my lord.”