Miss Hardacre sighed and began to finger her handkerchief.
“It was Aunt Letitia. I’ll swear it was Aunt Letitia. Damn the old woman, Jilian, I absolutely hate her!”
“On my honor, cousin, I’ll go back and turn her out of my house.”
Here came Miss Hardacre’s supreme opportunity. What more affecting and delightful a virtue than that sweet spirit of forgiveness that juggles divinely with the proverbial coals of fire. Miss Jilian bear malice? No, the gods forbid! She would plead with her dear cousin, soothe his angry passions, stem the torrent of his wrath that threatened to descend upon the devoted dowager’s head. The Lady Letitia was a very old woman, and alas! my dear cousin, very worldly. She had her whims and her prejudices, and her temper had been rasped by the tooth of time. Naturally the Lady Letitia was ambitious for her dear nephew; who would not be ambitious for such a nephew as Richard Jeffray? The Lady Letitia had prejudices in favor of money. Could Richard blame her if she strove to save him from the “designs” of a poor baronet’s daughter, a country mouse who had no adornments save those simple virtues with which nature had endowed her unaffected soul?
What wonder that Richard, chivalrous lad, pressed Miss Hardacre’s hand to his lips, and vowed that no more beautiful and forgiving spirit had ever chastened mortal flesh. What wonder that the reconciliation was complete between them, and that Miss Jilian consented to sing her songs. How much more finely she sang than that stupid giantess, Julia Perkaby! “La, cousin Dick, you must not call young ladies names.” Might he not read his epic poem to her? “Oh, Richard, I am such an ignorant little thing. Listen? I could listen all day. I am sure you are a genius, Richard. Mr. Pope and Mr. Dryden never wrote half such fine verses as yours.” What wonder that Richard Jeffray departed from Hardacre that day, convinced in his heart that he was in love with his adorable cousin. Why, she was an angel. How could Aunt Letitia fabricate such monstrous and malignant lies?
When the purple shadow of the Beacon Rock fell athwart the crisp turf that afternoon, Richard remembered, even in his state of exaltation, the glowing face and fierce blue eyes of the fair savage of the woods. Old Peter Gladden had told his master all he knew concerning the forest-folk whose hamlet lurked in the midst of Pevensel. Richard remembered the place vaguely as a scattering of stone-roofed cottages sunk in the shadows of the woods. He had often explored the rides and wood-ways of Pevensel as a boy, and had even taken young owls from a ruined tower of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A sudden whim seized him that day to follow the bridle-track that branched off by the Beacon Rock, and led close, so old Gladden said, by the hamlet in the woods. It would lead him out by White Hind walk on the broad coaching-road to Lewes.