The Heart

Madam Cavendish was down that morning, sitting at table with her

stick beside her, her head topped with a great tower of snowy cap,

her old face now ivory-yellow, but with a wonderful precision of

feature, for she had been a great beauty in her day, so alert and

alive with the ready comprehension of her black eyes, under slightly

scowling brows, that naught escaped her that was within her reach of

vision. Somewhat dull was she of hearing, but that sharpness of eye

did much to atone for it. She looked up, when we entered, with such

keenness that for a second my thought was that she knew all.

"What were the sounds of merrymaking down the road?" said she.

"'Twas the morris dancers and the May-pole; 'tis the first of May,

as you know, madam," said Mary in her sweet voice, made clear and

loud to reach her grandmother's ear; then up she went to kiss her,

and the old woman eyed her with pride, which she was fain to conceal

by chiding. "You will ruin your complexion if you go out in such a

wind without your mask," she said, and looked at the maiden's roses

and lilies with that rapture of admiration occasioned half by memory

of her own charms which had faded, and half by understanding of the

value of them in coin of love, which one woman can waken only in

another.

For Catherine, Madam Cavendish had no glance of admiration nor word,

though she had tended her faithfully all the day before and half the

night, rubbing her with an effusion of herbs and oil for her

rheumatic pains. Yet for her, Madam Cavendish had no love, and

treated her with a stately toleration and no more. Mary understood

no cause for it, and often looked, as she did then, with a

distressful wonder at her grandmother when she seemed to hold her

sister so slightingly.

"Here is Catherine, grandmother," said she, "and she has had a

narrow escape from being pressed as Maid Marion by the morris

dancers." Madam Cavendish made a slight motion, and looked not at

Catherine, but turned to me with that face of anxious kindness which

she wore for me alone. "Saw you aught of the Golden Horn this

morning, Master Wingfield?" asked she, and I replied truthfully

enough that I had not.

Then, to my dismay, she turned to Mary and inquired what were the

goods which she had ordered from England, and to my greater dismay

the maid, with such a light of daring and mischief in her blue eyes

as I never saw, rattled off, the while Catherine and I stared aghast

at her, such a list of women's folderols as I never heard, and most

of them quite beyond my masculine comprehension.