Barbara turned to me; there was a gleam of triumph in the depths of her dark eyes.
"Perhaps when you hear of me at Court," she cried, "you'll be sorry to think how——"
But she broke off suddenly, and looked out of the window.
"You'll find a husband there," I suggested bitterly.
"Like enough," said she carelessly.
To be plain, I was in no happy mood. Her going grieved me to the heart, and that she should go thus incensed stung me yet more. I was jealous of every man in London town. Had not my argument, then, some reason in it after all?
"Fare-you-well, madame," said I, with a heavy frown and a sweeping bow. No player from the Lane could have been more tragic.
"Fare-you-well, sir. I will not detain you, for you have, I know, other farewells to make."
"Not for a week yet!" I cried, goaded to a show of exultation that Cydaria stayed so long.
"I don't doubt that you'll make good use of the time," she said, as with a fine dignity she waved me to the door. Girl as she was, she had caught or inherited the grand air that great ladies use.
Gloomily I passed out, to fall into the hands of my lord, who was walking on the terrace. He caught me by the arm, laughing in good-humoured mockery.
"You've had a touch of sentiment, eh, you rogue?" said he. "Well, there's little harm in that, since the girl leaves us to-morrow."
"Indeed, my lord, there was little harm," said I, long-faced and rueful. "As little as my lady herself could wish." (At this he smiled and nodded.) "Mistress Barbara will hardly so much as look at me."
He grew graver, though the smile still hung about his lips.
"They gossip about you in the village, Simon," said he. "Take a friend's counsel, and don't be so much with the lady at the cottage. Come, I don't speak without reason." He nodded at me as a man nods who means more than he will say. Indeed, not a word more would he say, so that when I left him I was even more angry than when I parted from his daughter. And, the nature of man being such as Heaven has made it, what need to say that I bent my steps to the cottage with all convenient speed? The only weapon of an ill-used lover (nay, I will not argue the merits of the case again) was ready to my hand.
Yet my impatience availed little; for there, on the seat that stood by the door, sat my good friend the Vicar, discoursing in pleasant leisure with the lady who named herself Cydaria.
"It is true," he was saying. "I fear it is true, though you're over young to have learnt it."
"There are schools, sir," she returned, with a smile that had (or so it seemed to me) a touch—no more—of bitterness in it, "where such lessons are early learnt."
"They are best let alone, those schools," said he.
"And what's the lesson?" I asked, drawing nearer.
Neither answered. The Vicar rested his hands on the ball of his cane, and suddenly began to relate old Betty Nasroth's prophecy to his companion. I cannot tell what led his thoughts to it, but it was never far from his mind when I was by. She listened with attention, smiling brightly in whimsical amusement when the fateful words, pronounced with due solemnity, left the Vicar's lips.
"It is a strange saying," he ended, "of which time alone can show the truth."
She glanced at me with merry eyes, yet with a new air of interest. It is strange the hold these superstitions have on all of us; though surely future ages will outgrow such childishness.
"I don't know what the prophecy means," said she; "yet one thing at least would seem needful for its fulfilment—that Mr. Dale should become acquainted with the King."
"True!" cried the Vicar eagerly. "Everything stands on that, and on that we stick. For Simon cannot love where the King loves, nor know what the King hides, nor drink of the King's cup, if he abide all his days here in Hatchstead. Come, Simon, the plague is gone!"
"Should I then be gone too?" I asked. "But to what end? I have no friends in London who would bring me to the notice of the King."
The Vicar shook his head sadly. I had no such friends, and the King had proved before now that he could forget many a better friend to the throne than my dear father's open mind had made of him.
"We must wait, we must wait still," said the Vicar. "Time will find a friend."
Cydaria had become pensive for a moment, but she looked up now, smiling again, and said to me:
"You'll soon have a friend in London."
Thinking of Barbara, I answered gloomily, "She's no friend of mine."
"I did not mean whom you mean," said Cydaria, with twinkling eyes and not a whit put out. "But I also am going to London."
I smiled, for it did not seem as though she would be a powerful friend, or able to open any way for me. But she met my smile with another so full of confidence and challenge that my attention was wholly caught, and I did not heed the Vicar's farewell as he rose and left us.
"And would you serve me," I asked, "if you had the power?"
"Nay, put the question as you think it," said she. "Would you have the power to serve me if you had the will? Is not that the doubt in your mind?"
"And if it were?"
"Then, indeed, I do not know how to answer; but strange things happen there in London, and it may be that some day even I should have some power."
"And you would use it for me?"
"Could I do less on behalf of a gentleman who has risked his mistress's favour for my poor cheek's sake?" And she fell to laughing again, her mirth growing greater as I turned red in the face. "You mustn't blush when you come to town," she cried, "or they'll make a ballad on you, and cry you in the streets for a monster."
"The oftener comes the cause, the rarer shall the effect be," said I.
"The excuse is well put," she conceded. "We should make a wit of you in town."
"What do you in town?" I asked squarely, looking her full in the eyes.
"Perhaps, sometimes," she laughed, "what I have done once—and to your good knowledge—since I came to the country."
Thus she would baffle me with jesting answers as often as I sought to find out who and what she was. Nor had I better fortune with her mother, for whom I had small liking, and who had, as it seemed, no more for me. For she was short in her talk, and frowned to see me with her daughter. Yet she saw me, I must confess, often with Cydaria in the next days, and I was often with Cydaria when she did not see me. For Barbara was gone, leaving me both sore and lonely, all in the mood to find comfort where I could, and to see manliness in desertion; and there was a charm about the girl that grew on me insensibly and without my will until I came to love, not her (as I believed, forgetting that Love loves not to mark his boundaries too strictly) but her merry temper, her wit and cheerfulness. Moreover, these things were mingled and spiced with others, more attractive than all to unfledged youth, an air of the world and a knowledge of life which piqued my curiosity and sat (it seems so even to my later mind as I look back) with bewitching incongruity on the laughing child's face and the unripe grace of girlhood. Her moods were endless, vying with one another in an ever undetermined struggle for the prize of greatest charm. For the most part she was merry, frank mirth passing into sly raillery; now and then she would turn sad, sighing, "Heigho, that I could stay in the sweet innocent country!" Or again she would show or ape an uneasy conscience, whispering, "Ah, that I were like your Mistress Barbara!" The next moment she would be laughing and jesting and mocking, as though life were nought but a great many-coloured bubble, and she the brightest-tinted gleam on it.
Are women so constant and men so forgetful, that all sympathy must