Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 34

Nay, she asks what 'the Church' means."

"If she be in the Church, she can wait to know it. Thy garments will not keep thee less warm because thou hast never learned how to weave them."

Hawise did not reply, but she looked unconvinced.

A few days after this, Eva was pleased to inform Beatrice that she had been so happy as to reach that point which in her eyes was the apex of feminine ambition.

"I am betrothed to Sir William de Cantilupe."

Margaret sighed.

"Dost thou like him?" asked Beatrice, in her straightforward way, which was sometimes a shade too blunt, and was apt to betray her into asking direct questions which it might have been kinder and more delicate to leave unasked.

Eva blushed and simpered.

"I'll tell thee, Beatrice," said little Marie, dancing up. "She's over head and ears in love--so much over head,"--and Marie's hand went as high as it would go above her own: "but it's my belief she has tumbled in on the wrong side."

"'The wrong side'!" answered Beatrice, laughing. "The wrong side of love? or the wrong side of Eva?"

"The wrong side of Eva," responded Marie, with a positive little nod.

"As to love, I'm not quite sure that she knows much about it: for I don't believe she cares half so much for Sir William as she cares for being married. That's the grand thing with her, so far as I can make out. And that's not my notion of love."

"Thou silly little child of twelve, what dost thou know about it?"

contemptuously demanded Eva. "Thy time is not come."

"No, and I hope it won't," said Marie, "if I'm to make such a goose of myself over it as thou dost."

"Marie, Marie!"

"It's true, Margaret!--Now, Beatrice, dost thou not think so? She makes a regular misery of it. There is no living with her for a day or two before he comes to see her. She never gives him a minute's peace when he is here; and if he looks at somebody else, she goes as black as a thunder-cloud. If he's half an hour late, she's quite sure he is visiting some other gentlewoman, whom he loves better than he loves her.

She's for ever making little bits of misery out of nothing. If he were to call her 'honey-sweet Eva' to-day, and only 'sweet Eva' to-morrow, she would be positive there was some shocking reason for it, instead of, like a sensible girl, never thinking about it in that way at all."

Beatrice and Doucebelle were both laughing, and even Margaret joined in a little.

"Of course," said Marie by way of postscript, "if Sir William had been badly hurt in a tournament, or anything of that sort, I could understand her worrying about it: or if he had told her that he did not love her, I could understand that: but she worries for nothing at all! If he does not tell her that he loves her every time he comes, she fancies he doesn't."

"Marie, don't be so silly!"

"Thanks, I'll try not," said Marie keenly. "And she calls that love!

What dost thou think, Beatrice?"

"Why, I think it does not sound much like it, Marie--in thy description."

"Why, what notion of love hast thou?" said Eva scornfully. "I have not forgotten how thou wert wont to talk of thy betrothed."

"But I never professed to love Leo," said Beatrice, looking up. "How could I, when I had not seen him?"

"Dost thou want to see, in order to love?" sentimentally inquired Eva.

"No," answered Beatrice, thoughtfully. "But I want to know. I might easily love some one whom I had not seen with my eyes, if he were always sending me messages and doing kind actions for me: but I could not love somebody who was to me a mere name, and nothing more."

"It is plain thou hast no sensitiveness, Beatrice."

"I'd rather have sense,--wouldn't you?" said little Marie.

"As if one could not have both!" sneered Eva.

"Well, if one could, I should have thought thou wouldst," retorted Marie.

"Well! I don't understand you!" said Eva. "I cannot care to be loved with less than the whole heart. I should not thank you for just the love that you can spare from other people."

"But should not one have some to spare for other people?" suggested Marie.

"That sounds as if one's heart were a box," said Beatrice, "that would hold so much and no more. Is it not more like a fountain, that can give out perpetually and always have fresh supplies within?"

"Yes, for the beloved one," replied Eva, warmly.

"For all," answered Beatrice. "That is a narrow heart which will hold but one person."

"Well, I would rather be loved with the whole of a narrow heart than with a piece of a broad one."

"O Eva!"

"What dost thou mean, Doucebelle?" said Eva, sharply, turning on her new a.s.sailant. "Indeed I would! The man who loves me must love me supremely--must care for nothing but me: must find his sweetest reward for every thing in my smile, and his bitterest pain in my displeasure.

That is what I call love."

"Well! I should call that something else--if Margaret wouldn't scold,"

murmured Marie in an undertone.

"What is that, Marie?" asked Margaret, with a smile.

"Self-conceit; and plenty of it," said the child.

"Ask Father Bruno what he thinks, Beatrice," suggested Margaret, after a gentle "Hus.h.!.+" to the somewhat too plain-spoken Marie. "Thou canst do it, but it would not come so well from us."

"Dost thou mean to say I am conceited, little piece of impertinence?"

inquired Eva, in no dulcet tones.

"Well, I thought thou saidst it thyself," was the response, for which Marie got chased round the room with the wooden side of an embroidery frame, and, being lithe as a monkey, escaped by flying to the Countess's rooms, which communicated with those of her daughter by a private staircase.

Father Bruno came up, as he often did, the same evening: but before Beatrice had time to consult him, the small Countess of Eu appeared from nowhere in particular, and put the crucial question in its crudest form.

"Please, Father Bruno, what is love?"

"Dost thou want telling?" inquired Bruno with evident amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Please, we all want telling, because we can't agree."

Bruno very rarely laughed, but he did now.