I felt myself growing pale at that, and I could not speak because of
a curious stiffness of my lips, and I heard my heart beat like a
clock in the deserted house. Sir Humphrey was looking at me with an
anxiety which was sharpening into suspicion. "Harry," he said, "you
do not think--"
"'Tis sheer folly, lad," I burst out then, "and let us have no more
of it. 'Tis but the idle prating of a lovesick girl, who should have
a lover, ere she try to steal a nest in the heart of one of her own
sex. 'Tis folly, Sir Humphrey Hyde."
"So said I to Cicely," Sir Humphrey cried, eagerly, too interested
in his own cause to heed my slighting words for his sister. "'Tis
the rankest folly, I told her. Here is Harry Wingfield, old enough
almost to be Mary's father, and beside, beside--oh, confound it,
Harry," the generous lad burst out. "I would not like you for a
rival, for you are a good half foot taller than I, and you have that
about you which would make a woman run to you and think herself safe
were all the Indians in Virginia up, and you are a dark man, and I
have heard say they like that, but, but--oh, I say, Harry, 'tis
a damned shame that you are here as you are, and not as a gentleman
and a cavalier with the rest of us, for all the evidence to the
contrary and all the government to the contrary, 'tis, 'tis the way
you should be, and not a word of that charge do I believe. May the
fiends take me if I do, Harry!" So saying, the lad looked at me, and
verily the tears were in his blue eyes, and out he thrust his honest
hand for me to grasp, which I did with more of comfort than I had
had for many a day, though it was the hand of a rival, and the next
minute forth he burst again: "Say, Harry, if it be true that thou
art out of the running, and I believe it must be so, for how
could?--say, Harry, think you there is any chance for me?"
"I know of no reason why there should not be, Sir Humphrey," I said.
"Only, only--that she is what she is, and I but myself. Oh,
Harry, was there ever one like that girl? All the spirit of daring
of a man she has, and yet is she full of all the sweet ways of a
maid. Faith, she would draw sword one minute and tie a ribbon the
next. She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all
night to broider herself a kerchief. Comrade and sweetheart both she
is, and was there ever one like her for beauty? Harry, Harry, saw
you ever such a beauty as Mary Cavendish?"