Part 24 (1/2)
Blanche's words, it was evident, came very unwillingly.
”He hath shown me divers matters wherein the difference is but little,”
she contrived to say.
Sir Thomas groaned audibly.
”G.o.d help and pardon me, to have left my lamb thus unguarded!” he murmured to himself. ”O Blanche, Blanche!”
”What is it, Father?” she said, looking up in some trepidation.
”Tell me, my daughter,--should it give thee very great sorrow, if thou wert never to see this young man again?”
”What, Father?--O Father!”
”My poor child!” he sighed. ”My poor, straying, unguarded child!”
Blanche was almost frightened. Her father seemed to her to be coming out in entirely a new character. At this juncture Lady Enville laid down the comedy, and thought proper to interpose.
”Doth Don John love thee, Blanche?”
Blanche felt quite sure of that, and she intimated as much, but in a very low voice.
”And thou lovest him?”
With a good many knots and twists of the gold chain, Blanche confessed this also.
”Now really, Sir Thomas, what would you?” suggested his wife, re-opening the discussion. ”Could there be a better establis.h.i.+ng for the maiden than so? 'Twere easy to lay down rule, and win his promise, that he should not seek to disturb her faith in no wise. Many have done the like--”
”And suffered bitterly by reason thereof.”
”Nay, now!--why so? You see the child's heart is set thereon. Be ruled by me, I pray you, and leave your fantastical objections, and go seek Don John. Make him to grant you oath, on the honour of a Spanish gentleman, that Blanche shall be allowed the free using of her own faith--and what more would you?”
”If thou send me to seek him, Orige, I shall measure swords with him.”
Blanche uttered a little scream. Lady Enville laughed her soft, musical laugh--the first thing which had originally attracted her husband's fancy to her, eighteen years before.
”I marvel wherefore!” she said, laying down the play, and taking up her pomander--a ball of scented drugs, enclosed in a golden network, which hung from her girdle by a gold chain.
”Wherefore?” repeated Sir Thomas more warmly. ”For plucking my fairest flower, when I had granted unto him but shelter in my garden-house!”
”He has not plucked it yet,” said Lady Enville, handling the pomander delicately, so that too much scent should not escape at once.
”He hath done as ill,” replied Sir Thomas shortly.
Lady Enville calmly inhaled the fragrance, as if nothing more serious than itself were on her mind. Blanche sat still, playing with her chain, but looking troubled and afraid, and casting furtive glances at her father, who was pacing slowly up and down the room.
”Orige,” he said suddenly, ”can Blanche make her ready to leave home?-- and how soon?”
Blanche looked up fearfully.
”What wis I, Sir Thomas?” languidly answered the lady. ”I reckon she could be ready in a month or so. Where would you have her go?”