“Thanks for your pistol,” she said, frankly, “David’s broken away, and can run three yards to Dan’s two. The lad will be safe enough now.”
Jeffray had taken the pistol from her and thrust it back into the holster. He was studying her angry yet handsome face, framed by its glorious sheen of hair.
“What were they fighting about?” he asked.
Bess laughed, flashed a look at him out of her fierce eyes.
“About me,” she said.
“You?”
“Yes. I must run home to warn Ursula and old Isaac. Good-night.”
She swung away suddenly over the heather, leaving Jeffray as though he had known since birth who Dan and David, Isaac and old Ursula were. The man watched her tall figure melt into the mist, wondering the while who this wild elf could be. Regaining the road, he trotted on again towards Rodenham, keeping a sharp watch upon the misty woods. That same evening he called Peter Gladden, the butler, to him in the library, and drew from the old man all he knew concerning the woodlanders who lived in the forest of Pevensel.
V
The great drawing-room at Rodenham was full of candles, powdered heads and waving feathers, gentlemen in purple, red, or blue, dames in gorgeous gowns and swelling hoops. The room had been the prior’s parlor of old, and still retained its slender pillars capped with foliage, its deeply moulded groins, its many vaults, now painted azure and crusted with silver stars. Candles were ranged around the walls in sconces between the long, gilded mirrors that made the room look like a magician’s maze. The panelling was painted after the French fashion with Cupids, garlands, and festoons of flowers. The furniture was also French, Louis Quinze; fauteuils, canopies carved and gilt and covered with tapestry; handsome commodes; here a fantastic buhl-table, or a chased and inlaid escritoire. There were two fireplaces in the long and curious room, both with oak logs stacked upon their burnished irons.