Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward to the hedge the girl idly sang--an old song of Thomas Heywood's,--in a serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the Duke beat time.
"Pack clouds away, and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow: Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, To give my love good-morrow. Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow: Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, To give my love good-morrow."
And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone:
"To give my love good-morrow, Notes from them all I'll borrow."
"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you like."
But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child."
Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of buying something for her.