“No, my boy, ’tis not yet two,” Master Ogilvie answered, hurriedly, but Judith answered nothing. She still stood in front of the deep hearth. “Come, come, Judith, girl,” cried her father, “surely you need no introduction to Cecil Lindley?”
“No, surely I know my cousin well.” The girl’s voice fell soft and full of singing notes as a meadow lark’s. “But I think he questions if he knows me.”
Her brown eyes were on a level with his, and he was remembering at that instant that Johan had said Mistress Judith’s lips would be level with his. Ay, they were level with his, and they were near his, too, for she had come straight to him and given him both her hands.
“Judith!”
That was all he said, and it seemed to the girl that he drew back, away from her. And possibly he did, for he knew that he must not draw her close, not yet, oh, not yet, anyway.
And after he had spoken that one word, after he had said her name, he seemed to find no words to offer her, and she looked for none. He still held her hands, however, and she still looked straight and deep into his eyes.
Once the red line of her mouth widened into a smile, once it twisted into a mutinous knot. But she would not speak, nor would she help him to find words.
Master Ogilvie and Marmaduke Bass had passed into the room behind the hearth. The girl and the man were alone.
“You are as familiar to me as my own self, Judith,” he said at last. “It seems to me that I have known you always, that we have never been apart.”
“And even to me, we seem not quite strangers,” answered the soft, singing voice that held the meadow lark’s notes.