“Careful, dame! That’s the very text I’m preaching on. How much does the wench remember, eh? Deuce take me, sister, we have reared her here, and here she must remain. And Dan will be breaking all the youths’ heads unless he has her, and have her he shall.”
Isaac laid down his pipe and, leaning forward with his hands spread to the fire, began to speak further to the old woman in his grim and didactic way. There was an expression of almost ferocious earnestness on his thin and clever face, and it was difficult to believe that an old man could be possessed of so much fire and vigor. Isaac had ruled the hamlet these forty years; his will had been law unto them all. Old Ursula’s one feeling was known to the patriarch well enough. He played upon it that night as she sat in the ingle-nook and listened. The dame kept a stockingful of guineas hid under the floor in one of the upper rooms. She would often go up secretly and play with the pretty golden pieces, counting and recounting them, letting them fall and jingle in her lap.
“A hundred gold guineas, dame,” said Isaac at the end of his persuading. “I’ll bring them to you on the betrothal day. Why, look you, the wench will be spry and gay enough when she is mated. Unbroken fillies are always wild.”
Ursula nodded over the fire, stroked the black cat reflectively, and watched Isaac’s face with her greedy eyes.
“You take your oath on it?” she asked.
The patriarch grinned, and drew a leather pouch from the tail-pocket of his coat. He jingled it and tossed it into his sister’s lap.
“There are twenty,” he said, curtly; “keep them, dame, as a proof of the bargain. I’ll give you the rest when the gold piece is broken.”
X
Richard Jeffray could not break from the thoughts of Bess that had followed him from out the green glooms of Pevensel. Why, because she had a comely body and a comely face, should he be forever recalling the flash of her red-stockinged ankles under her short gown of green, the fine lifting of her handsome head, the way she had of putting her right hand up to her throat and of letting her eyes dwell with strange intentness upon his face? Jeffray was honestly troubled by these haunting thoughts, these visions of passion that flashed on him out of his own heart. Despite his romanticism he did not lack for character and discretion, and pedagogic reason told him that such dreams were neither obedient to philosophy nor to his loyalty to Miss Hardacre.
The news of Jeffray’s misadventure in the woods had been duly carried to Hardacre house; nor was it long before Mr. Lancelot and Miss Jilian rode over to inquire after their dear cousin. Richard was idling in the garden, planning color schemes for the summer, when he heard the clatter of hoofs coming down the road through the park. Richard recognized Mr. Lot in scarlet mounted on a great, rawboned roan, and Miss Jilian beside him in a green riding-habit, a black beaver on her auburn hair. Richard crossed the terrace and went down the steps to meet them. His head was still bandaged, a fact that Mr. Lancelot remarked upon with his usual blunt brevity.