Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/176

148 word of love. All is changed to me since I have known you. I am poor and lowly and all unworthy of you; but if great love may weigh down such defects, then mine may do it. Give me but one word of hope to take to the wars with me—but one. Ah, you shrink, you shudder! My wild words have frightened you.'

Twice she opened her lips, and twice no sound came from them. At last she spoke in a hard and measured voice, as one who dare not trust herself to speak too freely.

'This is over-sudden,' she said; 'it is not so long since the world was nothing to you. You have changed once; perchance you may change again.'

'Cruel!' he cried, 'who hath changed me?'

'And then your brother,' she continued with a little laugh, disregarding his question. 'Methinks this hath become a family custom amongst the Edricsons. Nay, I am sorry; I did not mean a jibe. But indeed, Alleyne, this hath come suddenly upon me, and I scarce know what to say.'

'Say some word of hope, however distant—some kind word that I may cherish in my heart.'

'Nay, Alleyne, it were a cruel kindness, and you have been too good and true a friend to me that I should use you despitefully. There cannot be a closer link between us. It is madness to think of it. Were there no other reasons, it is enough that my father and your brother would both cry out against it.'

'My brother, what has he to do with it? And your father'

'Come, Alleyne, was it not you who would have me act fairly to all men, and, certes, to my father amongst them?'

'You say truly,' he cried, 'you say truly. But you do not reject me, Maude? You give me some ray of hope? I do not ask pledge or promise. Say only that I am not hateful to you—that on some happier day I may hear kinder words from you.'

Her eyes softened upon him, and a kind answer was on her lips, when a hoarse shout, with the clatter of arms and