Lady Royd fingered her scent-bottle, and laughed vaguely, enjoying the girl’s transparent honesty. “It all has a romantic sound, Nance. Did you learn it from books, as poor Rupert learned his soldiery?”
The taunt stung Nance, because she had hoped, with odd persistency, that Rupert would come in, after going his round of the house, to ask her to sing to him. And he had not come; and she had tender songs enough in readiness, for she remembered how wantonly she had hurt him not long ago.
“Where did you learn it, girl?” insisted Lady Royd, with tired irony. “I’m past the age of glamour--and half regret it--and you may recapture for me all the fragment silliness. Nance, believe me, I cannot make a satisfying meal of dew-drops. I must be getting old, for I grow fonder and fonder of my cook, who sends substantial rations from the kitchen.”
So then Nance, hot-headed, resentful, not guessing that she was being gently baited to while away an hour’s boredom from her companion--Nance stood to her little, queenly height. And her eyes were beautiful, because her eagerness shone through them. And she tapped her buckled slipper on the beeswaxed floor, as if she were impatient to be dancing with true men, or dying with them along the road that Sir Jasper and his friends had sought.
“I learned it--as Rupert learned his soldiery, I think--not from books at all, my lady. It was my heart taught me, or my soul, or what you choose to name that something which is--is bigger, somehow, than one’s self. Honour--I cannot tell you the keen, sharp strength, the sweetness and the pity the word spells for me. It is like the swords my father is so fond of--bright and slim, like toys to look at; but you can bend them till point touches hilt and yet not break them. And you can ride out and cleave a way with these same words.”
Lady Royd was no cynic now. The peril and discomfort of the times had been opening closed windows for her, as for others who lived near this wind-swept heath. By stealth, and fearing much, she had peered out through these unshuttered casements; and Nance was speaking outright of the fugitive, dim thoughts that she herself had harboured.
“Go, my dear,” she said gently. “You’ve the voice you sing with--the voice that Rupert praises. Go, sing to me again of--of love and honour, child.”