Presently Will Gordon came bustling down to breakfast, having cleaned his accoutrements and adorned himself with such sober trappings as were permitted by the Spartan taste of the Covenanting regiment. Will had still that noisily cheerful self-consciousness which always characterizes the very young husband doing the unaccustomed honors of his house.
"Sit down and be welcome, Wat, lad," he cried, "and tell us all the tale of your journeying."
And so at the table which Maisie had covered with plain coarse Dutch linen, very unlike the fine cloths which she had left behind her in Scotland, the four sat down. It was a heartsome meal, and after a little while Lochinvar began to tell his tale, giving himself little honor, making nothing of the danger, and dwelling much on the ridiculous aspect of Haxo the Bull, his ill-favored Calf, and his bald-headed Killer.
As the tale proceeded Will kept up a constant fire of interjections, such as "That was well thought on!" "Bravely! my lad!" and "Well done, Glenkens!" But presently Maisie left her seat, and came round to sit beside Wat as he began to tell of entering alone at midnight into the dark house of Brederode with the unknown danger before and the three traitors behind. All the time Kate sat still, saying nothing and eating nothing, her lips a little open and tremulous, and her dark eyes shining with a light in them like a sunbeam in the still water of a sea cave.
And when it came to the telling of the combat, and the little chance of life that he had, it so fared that Wat raised his eyes to Kate's, and lo! tears were running silently down her face and falling unregarded on her white gown.
In a moment more she had risen and left the table, slipping like a gleam of light into the next room.
Maisie looked up with much astonishment as she caught the waft of the girl's gown.
"Why, Kate!" she exclaimed, and without another word sped after her. When she reached the little room where Kate slept, she found the girl standing by the window, leaning her head against the thin curtain. She kept her back to her friend, and did not turn round at her entrance. Maisie carefully closed the door and went up quickly to Kate. Silently she put her arm about the slim and supple waist.
"I – I am not crying – I am not indeed!" said Kate, a little indignantly, putting her hand on her friend's wrist as if to push it away.
"No – no, of course you are not," said Maisie, making (to say the least of it) an affirmation the truth of which was not wholly obvious. For the girl's tears dropped steadily upon her white gown, a great one even falling warm upon Maisie's hand at her waist, while all her slender body was shaken with sobs.
"It was only – " Kate began, and then stopped.
Maisie sighed as she sat down on the white bed, which, as was its occupant's custom, had been made up with military precision quite an hour before. She drew Kate down beside her gently till the girl's head rested on her shoulders.
"There, there, my lamb," she whispered, soothingly, when at last Kate found what most she wanted – a soft and comfortably sympathetic surface to cry upon. Maisie's hand passed lightly over the shapely head with its straying and enticing thatch of dark love-locks, and her voice crooned and cooed over her friend like a dove over its mate in the nest. Then for a long time she continued to hush the girl in her arms, as if she had been but a little ailing child.
Once there came the sound of a foot heavily masculine in the passage, and a hand was laid on the latch. Kate made a motion to rise and dry her face, but Maisie's arms held her tight.
"Go away, William! Go away at once!" she cried, with instant change of tone, her voice ringing out in such imperious fashion that Will Gordon, her husband, fled back to the sitting-room, feeling that he had just saved himself on the brink of some absolutely fatal mistake.
Yet all the while Maisie offered her friend not a word of sympathy, only the comforting of silent understanding, the touch of loving lips and hands, and the pressure of loving arms. Kate (she said to herself) would tell her what she wished at her own time. Maisie had a woman's tact and did not press for an explanation of a girl's wayward moods, as even the wisest of men would have done on such an occasion.
"Oh, he might have been killed," at last Kate's words came in a rushing whisper, as she lifted her face a little higher on Maisie's shoulder. "And I had sent him away so cruelly. And when he came back I never told him that I was glad to see him, Maisie. I snatched away my hand." She added the last words as if that indefensible action had only crowned a long series of enormities.
"Well," answered her friend, smiling very lovingly down at her, "he is not gone yet. Come back and say it now. I dare say he will forgive you, if you look at him like that."
But Kate only sadly shook her head, a little reproachfully that such a revolutionary proposal should come from one of Maisie's pretended sympathy and understanding.
"How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They saw me crying, and they would sit and look at me all the time – like – like – " (and Kate paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."
Yet she sighed and turned her face a little more inward towards Maisie's shoulder. "No, decidedly," she said, as if after all she had been considering the question; "I cannot go back."
Maisie loosened her arms from about Kate's neck. "Then you shall not, sweeting," she said, with determination, as if a coercive army had been at hand; "lie you still there and I will get them away. Trust me, they shall know no more than it is good for men to know."
And she nodded her head to express the limited capacity of mankind, and the absolute necessity that there was for the wiser portion of the race to maintain them in a condition of strictly defined and diplomatic ignorance.
Before she went out of the bedroom Maisie set by the girl's side a small bottle of the sweet-scented water of Cologne, one which Wat himself had brought back from his last campaign. "He carried that nearly a year in his haversack," Maisie said, irrelevantly, as she set the vial within reach of Kate's hand. "I will go send him to take a bath. He must have ridden both hard and fast to be back from Brederode by six o'clock in the morning."
"You will not tell them," whispered the girl, faintly, catching at Maisie's hand as she went out, "nor let him think that I am – foolish?"
"Trust to me," said Maisie Lennox, nodding her head and smiling serenely back as she went out.
In the sitting-chamber she found the two young men still at the table talking together. They stopped with badly assumed masculine ease as she entered. Since Will's rebuff at the chamber door they had sat conversing in perfunctory and uncomfortable sentences, their ears directed towards the door like those of a dog that hears an unkenned foot on the stair, their attention anywhere but upon the subject concerning which they were speaking.
Maisie began at once in the hushed and important tone of the messenger fresh from the seat of war. "Kate could not sleep last night for the noise of the wooden sabots upon the street outside. She has had a headache all this morning, and I ought not to have let her listen to Wat's tale of horrors – "
"I trust I did not – " Wat began, suddenly conscience-stricken.
"No, no," said Maisie, motioning him to sit down, "it was all my fault, not yours at all – I should have bethought me in time. She will be quite well after she has slept. Be sure you remember to walk quietly with your great boots," she added, looking viciously at her husband.
At this hint Wat rose to go. In doing so he accidentally pushed his stiff wooden chair back from the table with a loud creak, and then abjectly recoiled from Maisie's face of absolute horror.
He sat down again disconsolately. Will Gordon and he cast a pathetic look at each other. Their place was obviously not here. So one after the other they bent and pulled off their heavy foot-gear, while Maisie watched them with uplifted finger of the most solemnizing caution. Then very softly the two men stole down the stairs, carrying their boots in their hands.
Maisie