“There was a gentleman out hunting with the Lady Julia o’ Thursday,” answered the crone, “as carried his arm in a sling, I heard tell; though he rode with the best of them.”
“Faugh!”
Lord Blantyre loosed Pomona’s tress and lay back sullenly. He drank the cup when she held it to his lips, in the same sullen silence; but when she shook his pillows and smoothed his sheet and cooed to him in the dear voice of his dream: “Now, sleep,” he murmured, complainingly: “Not if you leave me!”
Pomona’s heart gave a great leap, and a rose flush grew on her face, lovelier than ever sunrise or fireglow had called there.
“I will not leave you, my lord,” she replied. Her voice filled the whole room with deep harmony.
He woke in the gray dawn, and there sat Pomona, her eyes dreaming, her hands clasped, her face a little stern in its serene, patient weariness. He cried to her sharply, because of the sharpness with which his heart smote him:
“Hast sat thus the whole night long?”
“Surely!” said she.
“Well, to bed with you, then,” he bade her, impatiently. “Nay, I want nought. Send one of your wenches to my bell, some Sue or Pattie, so it be a young one. And you—to bed, to bed!”
But she would not leave him till she had tested how it stood with him, according to her simple skill. As her hand rested on his brow, “Why Pomona?” queried he.