Elizabeth Huntoon colored almost as red as Peggy had done but now. It was as though the question had turned back life's dial-point and her youth was before her again. She saw Humphrey bending over her in the window-seat at James City. She could recall the trembling of his fingers as they fastened her necklace. She could almost hear again the beating of her own heart. So real did all this seem that she stood stock still with her finger on her lips, like a statue of Memory, smiling to its own image in the past. "Love!" she said at last, rousing herself, "why, I am fain to think the beauty of love is that none can describe it because it is different to each soul; nay, that it is different each hour to the same soul." "Does it bring happiness?" "In that it is like life,--brilliant as a field of poppies one day, sad as a grove of yew-trees the next." "But how can one tell when one is--is in love?" "Because when one is--is in love," mocked Elizabeth, "Love tells one." "Wert thou _sure_?" "Nay, I was of the blow hot, blow cold sort. When Humphrey shunned me, I fell a-dying for him; but when he sat casting sheep's eyes at me, I yawned in his face. I wanted to own him; yet I had no yearning to bear bonds myself. But sometimes storms clear the air better than sunshine; and when we met at the gate of death, as it seemed, in the massacre at Flower da Hundred yonder, I knew that in life or death he was mine and I his." "Master Huntoon," cried Peggy, turning to Romney with a merry eye but a trembling lip, "thinkst, then, thou couldst get up a massacre? 'Tis evident nothing less will show a woman what manner of thing love is! Yet that would not serve either, for in such like times 'tis only the great things of life that we heed. If I could keep thee for such, thou wouldst suit me to the Queen's taste, but oh dear me! life is made up of such little things! When thou dost trip over the root of a tree, I hate thee for thy clumsiness; when thou dost turn a compliment, I long to take it from thy lips and say it to myself,--I know so well what manner of speech a girl would like." "And I what answer a man would go on his knees for." "Ah, there thou art again. When thou didst kneel, I saw thee first dust the floor with thy kerchief." "I never did, Peggy, I swear I never did, though I had on my peach-blow breeches and blue hose." "Well, 'twas as bad, for thou didst look as if to see where the dust was least. Oh, I could scarce help bursting into laughter." "The devil!" exclaimed poor Romney, looking toward his mother with despair in his eyes, but his mother only smiled. "Tell me, thou dear, wise Mistress Huntoon, can a woman truly love and yet be fain to laugh at herself and her love and her lover?"