About bedtime old Ursula clattered in the kitchen, coughed, and stamped up the wooden stairs. She would sleep with Bess that night, since the young squire had her bed. Bess, unaffected as could be, bent over Richard to smooth his pillow. She looked at him a moment with a queer light in her eyes, and then—stooping, kissed his lips.
“That’s for my sake,” she said, with a half-frightened laugh. “Dan would have had it but for you.”
She fled away, red as fire, and closed the door very gently after her. Richard heard her climb the stairs. He lay awake for many hours, listening to the wind in the trees without, as the candles burned down towards their sockets.
VIII
Jeffray slept till after the sun was up, and was awakened by Bess tapping at his door. She came in blushing, looking very coy and winsome, with a bowl of hot milk on a pewter dish, milk that her own brown hands had drawn from the cow that morning. It was quite an uncommon mood in Bess, this shy and half stately air of aloofness, with its smooth tones and its half-abashed tenderness in the eyes. She gave Jeffray a very quiet good-morning, asked how he had slept, blushing still as she remembered their parting on the preceding night.
To Richard, he knew not why, there was a peculiar fascination in the girl’s presence, in the very nearness of her body to his. Their hands had touched as she held out the bowl of milk to him, and the silky coldness of her skin had discharged a species of subtle magnetism at the contact. He looked up into her face, saw the subdued light of the room intensify the richness of her coloring and enhance the lustrous shadows in her eyes. In truth, Bess’s eyes and Mr. Richard’s were always meeting that morning, so that one or the other would redden and look away. Jeffray, where he lay, could watch the girl through the open door as she glided to and fro in the kitchen. How tall and strong she was, how full of the delicious ardor of life, supple, swift, perfect in every outline. Big of body though she was, her long legs carried her with the swinging grace of an athletic male. She kept her mouth tightly shut in repose, her intense blue eyes shining out from her ruddy face.
Jeffray, finding himself little the worse for Dan’s cudgelling, had hardly risen, dressed, and shaved himself with one of Isaac’s razors, when Peter Gladden appeared with the patriarch before Ursula’s cottage, inquiring for the person of his master. The Lady Letitia herself was waiting for Richard in her coach below the Beacon Rock. Jeffray tied his cravat, buckled on his sword, and went out to speak with Peter Gladden in the kitchen. Isaac Grimshaw was there also, humble, benignant and subservient. Bess, seated on a settle by the fire, was mending the gown that had been torn in the scuffle with Dan yesterday.
Richard shook Isaac Grimshaw’s hand, bowed to old Ursula, and laid three guineas surreptitiously upon the table.
“I thank you for all your kindness,” he said, with a glance that was meant for Bess.
Isaac, bowing, and rubbing his hands together, declared that they were proud to have been able to serve such a gentleman.