“I am not afraid of Dan,” she said again, with a fine lifting of her head.
Jeffray felt something of the pride that played in her, and respected her the more for it.
“I am not dropping a favor for you, Bess,” he said.
“You see—you saved me from Dan’s cudgelling. And you—and Ursula have been very kind to me.”
They looked at each other half questioningly, a long and steady look that bore more meaning than many words. Richard blushed under the girl’s gaze. He suspected the spirit in her, and was loath to think that he had hurt her pride.
“You said I might have your pistols,” quoth Bess, suddenly.
“I was not made to serve. We are wild folk in the forest. I can take care of myself.”
Then, catching the look in Jeffray’s eyes, she smiled at him very dearly, and touched his hand.
“No, no, they will make me feel somehow that you are near. For I dreamed of you on St. Agnes’s Eve.”
She blushed and hung her head as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Jeffray had started, and reddened also. He looked at Bess and then at the heath showing gold beyond the trees.
“I will ride over—sometimes, Bess,” he said, slowly.
Her eyes flashed down at him, and then wavered away towards the woods.
“I knew you,” she said, simply, “when you lay on the grass—after I had put back Dan’s stick.”
Richard said nothing, but there was a strange sense of hurrying at his heart.
They overtook Peter Gladden on the heath, and Richard taking the mare from him bade him go forward and warn the Lady Letitia of his coming. When the man had gone, Jeffray drew the pistols from the holsters, shook out the priming, and handed them to Bess. They were light weapons of delicate make, the butts set in Damascened silver. The girl took them and put them in her gown above her girdle.
She laughed, and her eyes grew very bright of a sudden.
“You did not give me these in the dream,” she said.
In another moment Richard was in the saddle cantering over the heath towards the Beacon Rock.
The Lady Letitia had spent the whole of the previous day in meditation, suspecting shrewdly enough that her nephew had ridden over to Hardacre to make peace with the sweet Jilian. Of course Miss Hardacre would be kind to Richard, and in that arch young lady’s kindness, Aunt Letitia had foreseen her own discomfort. Now the dowager was not in the least inclined to abandon Rodenham, for her financial affairs were still in an embarrassed state. She had shut up her house in town for the winter, and was keeping her coach-horses and her three servants at Jeffray’s expense. Till late in the spring she had intended foraging for herself amid the Sussex woods, and it would be wickedly inconvenient for her to leave Rodenham at present.